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‘They Defended Ukraine’: The 14.Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS(Galizische Nr. 1) RevisitedPer Anders Rudling aa Lund University

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Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 25:329–368, 2012Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1351-8046 print/1556-3006 onlineDOI: 10.1080/13518046.2012.705633

‘They Defended Ukraine’: The 14.Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS

(Galizische Nr. 1) Revisited

PER ANDERS RUDLINGLund University

In recent years there has been an increased interest in the legacy ofthe Fourteenth Grenadier Division of the Waffen-SS, known as theWaffen-SS Galizien, a Ukrainian volunteer formation formed in1943. In Ukrainian ultra-nationalist mythology the unit is depictedas freedom fighters who fought for an independent Ukraine, its col-laboration with Nazi Germany dismissed as “Soviet propaganda.”There is a widening gulf between the myth and the picture thatemerges from the archival materials. This article revisits the historyof the unit, with a particular focus on aspects of its history whichthe myth makers omit or deny: its ideological foundations, its alle-giance to Adolf Hitler, and the involvement of units associated withthe division in atrocities against civilians in 1944.

The author wishes to thank Tarik Cyril Amar, Dominique Arel, Ray Brandon, FranziskaBruder, Roman Dubasevych, John-Paul Himka, Krzysztof Janiga, Ivan Katchanovski, DavidMarples, Jared McBride, Oleksandr Melnyk, Bohdan Oryshkevych, and Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe as well as the anonymous reviewers for generously sharing their materials, ideas, andtime. The interpretations and possible errors in the texts are my own.

Per Anders Rudling is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Department of History, LundUniversity, Sweden. His research interest includes identity, memory, and nationalist mythmaking in the Polish-Belarusian-Ukrainian borderlands. His recent articles include ‘The OUN,the UPA, and the Holocaust: A Study in the Manufacturing of Historical Myths,’ Carl BackPapers (2011); ‘Multiculturalism, Memory, and Ritualization: Ukrainian Nationalist Monumentsin Edmonton, Alberta,’ Nationalities Papers (2011); ‘The Khatyn Massacre in Belorussia: AHistorical Controversy Revisited,’ Holocaust and Genocide Studies (2012); ‘Warfare or WarCriminality?’ Ab Imperio (2012). He is currently working on a monograph on Ukrainian long-distance nationalism during the Cold War.

Address correspondence to Per Anders Rudling, Department of History, Lund University,Box 2074, SE-220 02, Sweden. E-mail: Per_Anders.Rudling@hist.lu.se

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INTRODUCTION: MEMORY AND POLITICS

In recent years there has been a modest renaissance in interest in the 14th

Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Ukrainian), or 14. Waffen GrenadierDivision der SS (ukrainische Nr. 1). The third president of Ukraine, ViktorYushchenko (2005–2010) embarked on an ambitious campaign of nation-alist myth making. He designated the far-right Organization of UkrainianNationalists (OUN), its leader Stepan Bandera, its armed wing, the UkrainianInsurgent Army (UPA), and its commander Roman Shukhevych official‘heroes of Ukraine.’ While Yushchenko did not explicitly mention theUkrainian Waffen-SS veterans, he also designated as heroes of Ukraine ‘othermilitary formations, parties, and organizations and movements, dedicatedto the establishment of Ukrainian state independence,’ which some haveinterpreted as an indirect recognition.1

Some circles within the Ukrainian diaspora and the far right have beenirritated that Yushchenko did not go far enough. A veteran diaspora his-torian recently took Yushchenko to task for his failure to rehabilitate andinclude Ukrainian units in the service of Nazi Germany in his myth mak-ing efforts.2 The historian, who is also an activist in the Ukrainian CanadianCongress, believes that the Waffen-SS veterans deserve ‘no less respect’ thanthe soldiers of the Red Army.3 On Remembrance Day 2010, Paul Grod,President of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, in the name of 1.2 millionUkrainian-Canadians, paid tribute to the veterans of the Waffen-SS Galizien,and remembered its fallen ‘who perished fighting for the freedom of theirancestral Ukrainian homeland.’4 When the president of the Canadian soci-ety of veterans of the Waffen-SS Galizien passed away earlier that year,the UCC claimed ‘he will be remembered as a hero of Ukraine who foughtfor her independence.’5 In 2011, the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies

1 Viktor Yushchenko, ‘Ukaz prezydenta Ukrainy no. 75/2010 Pro vshanuvannia uchsnyliv borot’by zanezalezhnist’ Ukrainy u XX stolitti’ Ofitsiine predstavnytstvo Prezydenta Ukrainy, 28 January 2010, http://www.president.gov.ua/documents/10379.html (accessed 26 December 2011).2 ‘What Yushchenko can be reproached with is not having brought into the project the Ukrainianveterans of the Waffen SS Division Halychyna and other units of the armed forces of the Axis powers.’Roman Serbyn, Erroneous Methods in J.-P. Himka’s Challenge to ‘Ukrainian Myths,’ 7 August 2011, CurrentPolitics in Ukraine Blog: Opinion and analysis on current events in Ukraine, Stasiuk Program, CIUS,University of Alberta, ed. David R. Marples. http://ukraineanalysis.wordpress.com/ (accessed 1 October2011).3 Roman Serbyn, ‘Fotohrafii dyvizii “Halychyna”—pam’iatka ukrains’koho patriotyzmu,’ in BohdanMatsiv (ed.), Ukrains’ka dyviziia ‘Halychyna’: Istoriia u svitlynakh vid zasnuvannia u 1943 r. dozvil’nennia z polonu 1949 r., L’viv: ZUKTs 2009), p. 234. http://www.voiakudg.com/ (accessed 8 July2011).4 ‘Ukrainian Community Honors Veterans on Remembrance Day,’ UCC Press Release, 11 November2010. Web. 13, 2 April 2011. On the cult of the Waffen-SS Galizien in Canada, see Per Anders Rudling,‘Multiculturalism, Memory, and Ritualization: Ukrainian Nationalist Monuments in Edmonton, Alberta,’Nationalities Paper39(5) (September 2011), pp. 733–768.5 Paul Grod, ‘UCC Expresses Condolences for Loss of Lew Babij,’ Press release, Ukrainian CanadianCongress, 12 January 2010.

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at the University of Alberta, funded primarily by donations from diasporadonors, instituted three new endowments in the names of leading Waffen-SSveterans.6

While Yushchenko’s successor Viktor Yanukovych has revoked thehero status of Bandera and Shukhevych and largely put an end to thestate cult of the ultra-nationalists, in Western Ukraine, apologetics for theWaffen-SS Galizien is entering the mainstream. On April 28, 2011, the68th anniversary of the establishment of Waffen-SS Galizien, neo-fascist‘autonomous nationalists,’ together with the far-right Svoboda Party, whichdominates the L’viv city government organized a march through the city.Led by Svoboda ideologue Iurii Mykhal’chyshyn of the L’viv city council,the nearly 700 participants (2,000 according to the organizers), carrying ban-ners with neo-Nazi symbols marched down the streets of L’viv, shoutingslogans like ‘Halychyna—division of heroes!,’ and ’One race, one nation,one Fatherland!’7 Svoboda, which dominates the L’viv city council, deco-rated the city with billboards with the symbol of the unit, accompaniedby the texts ‘the treasure of the nation’ and ‘they defended Ukraine.’(Figures 1 and 2).

In October 2011, L’viv saw the appearance of a taxi company, namedafter Waffen-SS Galizien. The uniformed cab driver greets his customerswith the OUN salute ‘Slava Ukrainy! Heroiam Slava! SS Galizien greets you!Please have a seat,’ and plays nationalist music in the cab during the ride.The entrepreneur explains that ‘To most people in L’viv, SS Galizien are

6 The endowments were instituted in the honor of former Waffen-SS Untersturmführer RomanKolisnyk (b. 1923), the editor of the journal of the Ukrainian Waffen-SS veterans Visti Kombantanta;Levko Babij (1927–2010), the late Canadian president of the veterans association of the divi-sion and Waffen-SS volunteer Edward Brodacky (1926–2007). The CIUS described their benefactorsin the following way: ‘Roman Kolisnyk belongs to a generation of Ukrainian emigrants who,faced with the horrors of war and communist terror, had no choice other than to fight backand then leave their homeland.’ Mykola Soroka, ‘Roman Kolisnyk’s New Fund and Bequest,’CIUS Press Release, 9 May 2011 http://www.ualberta.ca/CIUS/announce/media/Media%202011/2011-05-09%20Roman%20Kolisnyk%20new%20fund%20(eng).pdf (accessed 20 July 2011). The Levko and MarikaBabij Memorial Endowment Fund ‘supports programs and grants related to the study of twentieth-centuryUkrainian history, especially Ukraine in World War II. . . . In 1944 [Babij] joined the Galicia Division,later the 1st Ukrainian Division of the Ukrainian National Army. . . . He was Canadian national pres-ident of the Brotherhood of Veterans of the 1st UD UNA from 1986 to his death in 2010.’ AboutBrodacky we learn that ‘In 1944 he joined the Ukrainian “Galicia” Division, the bulk of which sur-rendered to the British army at the end of World War II.’ Bohdan Klid, Mykola Soroka and MyroslavYurkevich (eds.) ‘Focus on CIUS Donors: Roman Kolisnyk new fund and bequest;’ ‘The Levko and MarikaBabij Memorial Endowment Fund;’ ‘Edward Brodacky 1926–2007’, CIUS Newsletter 2011, Edmonton: TheCanadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, 2011, pp. 26–28. The University of Albertanow administers four endowments in the honor of Waffen-SS volunteers.7 ‘U L’vovi proishov marsh molodi na chest’ dyvizii “Halychyna,” ’ Zaxid.net, April 2011 http://zaxid.net/newsua/2011/4/28/210035/ (accessed 1 May 2011); ‘Marsh Velychi Dukhu 2011,’ Avtonomnyi opir,29 April 2011, http://opir.info/2011/04/29/marsh-velychi-duhu-natsionalnoi-virnosti-ta-lytsarskoji-chesti-marsh-dyviziji-halychyna/#more-7480 (accessed 31 December 2011).

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FIGURE 1 “The pride of the nation. The Ukrainian division Halychyna. They defendedUkraine,” posters by the Svoboda Party put up across Lviv, April 2009. (Courtesy of LucynaKulinska) (color figure available online).

heroes, who fought for Ukrainian independence—in the way they foundacceptable.’8 Similar views are being voiced from the highest echelons ofthe Greek Catholic Church. In December 2011, Cardinal Lubomyr Huzar,who headed of the Ukrainian Catholic Church from 2001 to 2011, deniedthat Waffen-SS Galizien had served Nazi Germany but rather, he alleged,had fought for Ukrainian independence. The unit, the Cardinal claimed,‘went through the war in German uniforms, but did not fight for Germany,but for their own rights . . . these were people who utilized the situationto fight for their independence. . . . I think, they behaved correctly. . . .

It was not the case, as some people today claim, that they served theHitlerites.’9

8 ‘U L’vovi z’’iavylos’ taksi SS “Halychyna.” Video,’ Ukrains’ka Pravda Zhyttia, 12 October 2011 http://life.pravda.com.ua/society/2011/10/12/87447/ (19 October 2011).9 Oleksandr Solonets’, ‘Liubomyr Huzar: zhyva rozmova,’ Narod.ua, 21 December 2011, http://narodua.com/ljudyna/ljubomyr-huzar-zhyva-rozmova.html (accessed 26 December 2011).

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FIGURE 2 “March of the Greatness of the Spirit” (Marsh Velychi Dukhu), celebrating the 68th

anniversary of the establishment of Waffen-SS Galizien, Lviv, April 28, 2011. Mykhal’chyshyn,front, extreme left. (Courtesy of Lucyna Kulinska) (color figure available online).

A POLARIZED HISTORIOGRAPHY

Across Europe, Waffen-SS veterans presented their organization as apan-European, anti-Communist force, defending Western civilization fromBolshevik hordes, essentially independent of the Allgemeine SS, on whichthey blamed the crimes of the Nazis.10 The German Waffen-SS veterans’association, the Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit der Angehörigen derehemaligen Waffen-SS (HIAG), presented itself as ‘apolitical.’ Emphasizingcamaraderie, honor, and the ‘holy’ duty to follow orders, the veterans pre-sented themselves as ‘the vanguard of European unification,’ and theircomrades as having fallen ‘for Germany and Europe.’11 They claimedto have fought for a united Europe, ‘which we, in our Divisions, envi-sioned during the defensive struggle against the onslaught from the East.In this struggle, our divisions fought exemplarily.’12 The German Waffen-SSveterans presented themselves as any other veterns’ association, but also

10 See Felix M. Steiner, Die Armee der Geächteten, Göttingen: Plesse Verlag, 1963, and Idem., DieFreiwilligen der Waffen-SS: Idee u. Opfergang, Preuss. Oldendorf: Schütz, 1973.11 Karsten Wilke, ‘Geistige Regeneration der Schutzstaffel in der frühen Bundesrepublik?: Die‘Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit der Angehörigen der ehemaligen Waffen-SS’ (HIAG),’ in Jan ErikSchulte (ed.), Die SS, Himmler und die Wevelsburg, Paderborn, Munich, Vienna, Zurich: FerdinandSchöningh 2009, p. 445.12 ‘wie es uns bei seiner Verteidigung gegen den Ansturm aus dem Osten vorschwebte und wie es beiseiner Verteidigung gerade in unseren Divisionen vorbildlich vertreten war.’ Wilke, ‘Geistige Regenerationder Schutzstaffel,’ p. 445, citing Otto Kumm, ‘Schafft klare Sicht,’ in Der Ausweg, (Juli 1951), p. 1.

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as ‘second class citizens’ in the Federal Republic, a community of vic-tims, tied together by their common suffering during and after the war.They regarded themselves as martyrs of allied despotism and justice ofthe victors.13 The legendary Waffen-SS officer Felix Steiner called his orga-nization Die Armee der Geächteten, the Army of the Scorned.14 Referringto their community as Bruder schweigen, the silent brotherhood, Germanand Swedish Waffen-SS veterans generally kept their past secret, otherthan what they shared with fellow veterans and closed circles of neo-Naziadmirers.15

The narrative of the Ukrainian Waffen-SS volunteers follows the samepattern as that of their German comrades. Major 1. General-Stab-OffizierWolf-Dietrich Heike claimed that ‘The [SS Division Galizien] took to thesword in good faith and for a just cause, that is the freedom and indepen-dence of their country. They wielded it cleanly and flawlessly.’16 VolodymyrKubijovyc, head of the Ukrainian Central Committee in Krakow, insisted thatthe organizers of the unit had ‘exclusively Ukrainian interests’ in mind.17

Wasyl Veryha, a member of the unit, claimed that ‘all Ukrainians’ sympa-thized with the Germans in 1941. Young Ukrainians, Veryha maintained,supported the unit because it was Ukrainian. The SS designation, he insisted,was assigned ‘against the will of the Ukrainians,’ and was only a formal titlethat had nothing to do with Nazi ideology.18 Like other Waffen-SS veterans,the veterans of Waffen-SS Galizien insist that their version of history is trueto the facts and not falsified.19

Nationalist émigrés have raised two generations in ritualistic celebrationof the ‘Heroes of Brody.’ Children and adolescents, dressed in the brownshirts and black ties of the SUM, the OUN(b) youth section, or the blue

13 Wilke, ‘Geistige Regeneration der Schutzstaffel,’ pp. 436, 437, 443.14 Steiner, Die Armee der Geächteten. The legends surrounding Steiner omitted the massacres that theWaffen-SS Wiking Division that he commanded perpetrated in Zolochiv in 1 July 1941.15 Bosse Schön and Thorolf Hillblad, Berlins sista timmar: En svensk SS-soldats berättelse om slutstri-den, Stockholm: Pocketförlaget, 2010, 12; Bosse Schön, Hitlers svenska soldater, Avesta, Sweden: Pocky,2005, pp.9, 154–156, 285–288.16 Wolf-Dietrich Heike, Sie wollten die Freiheit: die Geschichte der Ukrainischen Division, 1943–1945,Dorheim: Podzun, 1973, p. 244.17 Volodymyr Kubiiovych [Kubijovyc], ‘Pochatky ukrains’koi Dyvizii “Halychyna”,’ in Vasyl’ Ivanyshyn(ed.), Brody: Zbirnyk statei i narysiv za redaktsieiu Oleha Lysiaka, dopovnene, Drohobych-L’viv:‘Vidrodzhennia,’ 2003, p. 12.18 David Marples, ‘Beyond the Pale?: Conceptions and Reflections in Contemporary Ukraine aboutthe Division Galizien,’ Journal of Ukrainian Studies 33–34 (2008–2009), p. 341, and idem, Heroes andVillains: Creating National History in Contemporary Ukraine, Budapest: Central European UniversityPress, 2007, p. 186, citing Vasyl Veryha, ‘Im prysvichuvala velyka ideia . . . Dyviziia ‘Halychyna,’ iakthe bulo,’ Literarurna Ukraina, 25 June 1992.19 Mykhailo Slaboshpyts’kyi and Valerii Stetsenko (eds.) ‘Slovo vid uporiadnykiv,’ in idem., Ukrains’kadyviziia ‘Halychyna’: Istoryko-publitsystychnyi zbirnyk (Kyiv-Toronto: TOV ‘Nehotsiant-Plius’ and Bratsvokolyshnykh voiakiv 1-oi UD UNA, UVKR, redaktsiia hazety ‘Visti z Ukrainy,’ 1994, p. 7.

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uniforms of the Plast, were made to march in formation, decorate gravesof the fallen heroes, perform militaristic and folkloristic hymns, and recitepledges of allegiance in front of nationalist memorials.20 Many came to inter-nalize the Waffen-SS veterans’ narrative. In the leading Canadian OUN(b)organ Homin Ukrainy Lubomyr Luciuk and Myroslav Yurkevych wrote in1983 how

Membership in the Division has never been regarded by its veterans asa cause for shame. Veterans living in Canada, the United States; andWestern Europe belong to a public organization, the Brotherhood ofVeterans of the 1st Ukrainian Division of the Ukrainian National Army . . .

[A] wealth of documentary evidence . . . shows that the Division cannotbe linked with crimes against humanity.21

Admirers of the unit categorically deny the unit’s dedication to fascistideology and the National Socialist cause, presenting it instead as havingfought for ‘freedom,’ even Ukrainian independence. Typically, they objectto the term ‘SS’ and decry the ‘lack of objectivity’ on the subject in con-temporary Ukraine, complaining that allegations of collaboration are false.22

Some apologists claim that the Waffen-SS men ‘had no choice’ but to jointhe Waffen-SS because ‘the UPA could not take everyone.’23 Others denythe volunteers’ oath to Hitler. Kost Bondarenko claims the volunteers tookan oath of allegiance to Ukraine, which, supposedly ‘later saved the divi-sion’s soldiers and officers from retribution: they were found not guilty ofwar crimes after the conflict.’24 Volodymyr V’’iatrovych, who Yushchenkoappointed head of the former KGB archives and tasked with the instru-mentalization of Ukrainian history has dismissed charges that the Waffen-SSGalizien were Nazi collaborators as ‘Soviet propaganda.’25

20 Rudling, ‘Multiculturalism, Memory, and Ritualization’; Rossolinski-Liebe, ‘Celebrating Fascism andwar Criminality in Edmonton: The Political Myth and Cult of Stephen Bandera in Multicultural Canada,’Kakanien Revisited, 29 December (2010).21 Lubomyr Luciuk and Myroslav Yurkevych, ‘Ukrainian Division “Galicia” defended,’ Ukrainian EchoJuly 4, 1983, vol. VII, No. 4(65): 3. See also Lubomyr Luciuk, ‘Ukraine’s Wartime Unit Never Linked toWar Crimes (Ukrainian Division Galicia),’ Ukrainian Review35(2) (Summer 1987) pp. 29–31.22 Oleksandr Melnyk, Review of Michael James Melnyk, To Battle: The Formation and History of the14th Galician Waffen-SS Division. Solihull, UK: Helion & Co., 2002; Journal of Ukrainian Studies30(2)(Winter 2005) pp. 108; Marples, ‘Beyond the Pale?,’ p. 346, citing Ivan Haivanovych, “Ne nazyvaite “SS”!’,Ukraina moloda, 30 January 2001.23 Marples, ‘Beyond the Pale?,’ p. 343, citing Iaroslav Iakymovych, ‘Z zhertvom stihom ikh zvytiah,’Za vilnu Ukrainu, 21 August 1993.24 Marples, ‘Beyond the Pale?,’ p. 348, citing Kost Bondarenko, ‘Istoriia, iakoi ne znaiemo: Chy nekhochemo znaty?,’ Dzerkalo tyzhnia, 29 March – 5 April 2002.25 ‘If you look at the Second World War with Soviet eyes it is clear that the Galician Division sin-glehandedly appears as collaborators and traitors . . . But such views are outdated and . . . over thepast 20 years historians have done enough to deconstruct such stereotypes as Soviet propaganda.’

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In the literature, one can distinguish between the more simple nation-alist propaganda and more ambitious post-Soviet attempts at scholarship onthe history of Waffen-SS Galizien. Nevertheless, the line between scholar-ship and far-right activism is often blurred. For instance, the most detailedUkrainian study of the unit, Andrii Bolianovs’kyi’s Dyviziia ‘Halychyna’:Istoriia uncritically relies partly on secondary sources by American Holocaustdeniers.26 The most extensive English-language account of the unit, MichaelJames Melnyk’s To Battle, is written by an insider of the veteran commu-nity, and provides helpful references to a wealth of primary sources. WhileMelnyk does not suppress or deny the difficult issues, the narrative is nation-alistic, and the book is proudly dedicated to the memory of the author’sfather, a Waffen-SS veteran.27

Many of the post-Soviet apologetics have been articulated as polemicsagainst Soviet propagandistic representations.28 Another body of litera-ture consists of rather shrill, accounts by Polish expellees from the KresyWschodnie, the former Polish borderlands transferred to the USSR in 1945.29

Similarly, the accounts by Nazi-hunters like Sol Littman, the former Canadiandirector of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and B’nai Brith’s League for HumanRights, are also partly written in form of polemics.30 The most extensiveassessment of Waffen-SS Galizien was prepared for the Commission ofInquiry on Nazi War Criminals in Canada (the Deschênes Commission) in1986. However, it is now a quarter century old and written before Sovietarchives were made available. Moreover, only parts of this study are public

‘Istoryk Volodymyr V’’iatrovych pro ukrains’ku dyviziiu SS Halychyna,’ BBC Ukrainian multime-dia, 13 June 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/ukrainian/multimedia/2011/06/110613_vyatrovych_galychyna_video.shtml (accessed 21 June 2011).26 Andrii Bolianovs’kyi, Dyviziia ‘Halychyna’: Istoriia (L’viv: A. Bolianovs’kyi, 2000, p. 230, citingRichard Landwehr, Fighting for Freedom: The Ukrainian Volunteer Division of the Waffen-SS, Silver Spring,MD: Bibliophile Legion Books, Inc., 1985. The same problem appears in Andrii Bolianovs’kyi Ukrain’skiviis’kovi formuvannia v zbroinykh sylakh Nimechchyny (1939–1945), L’viv: L’vivs’kyi natsional’nyi uni-versitet im. Ivana Franka and Kanads’kyi Insititut Ukrains’kykh Studii Al’berts’koho universitetu, 2003,pp. 10, 14, 152. Bolianovs’kyi relies on The Journal for Historical Review and Richard Landwehr, who isclosely associated with American Holocaust deniers. On the Institute for Historical Review, see DeborahLipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. With a New Preface by theAuthor, New York: Plume, 1994, pp. 137–156.27 See the review by Oleksandr Melnyk, p. 110.28 In the 1980s, Soviet Ukrainian publishers presented a number of highly tendentious pamphlets onthe Waffen-SS Galizien. As the archives were closed, and their claims were unverifiable, scholars tendedto dismiss them as unreliable. For an example of Soviet Ukrainian literature on the unit, meant for foreignconsumption see Oleksiy Kartunov, Enemies of Peace and Democracy, Uzhhorod: Karpaty, 1985; ValeriiStyrkul, The SS Werewolves, L’viv: Kamenyar Publishers, 1982; idem., We Accuse: Documentary Sketch,Kyiv: Dnipro Publishers, 1984.29 See, for instance, Edward Prus, SS-Galizien: patrioci czy zbrodniarze?, Wrocław: Wydaw. ‘Nortom,’2001.30 Sol Littman, Pure Soldiers or Sinister Legion: The Ukrainian 14th Waffen-SS Division, Montreal,New York, London: Black Rose Books, 2003. For a recent, critical journalistic account of the Division,see Christopher Hale, Hitler’s Foreign Executioners: Europe’s Dirty Secret, Stroud, UK: The History Press,2011, pp. 293–318.

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and available to researchers. For instance, the important report by Alti Rodal,the Deschênes’ Commission’s Director of Historical Research, titled ‘Nazi WarCriminals in Canada: The Historical and Policy Setting from the 1940s tothe Present,’ meant to accompany the Commission’s main report, was notreleased at the time.

There is, however, a small but increasing body of scholarly studies.Among the recent academic studies in the English language can be men-tioned the works of Frank Golczewski, Olesya Khromeychuk, and DavidMarples.31 The body of serious scholarly literature on the topic is thus limited,polarized, and the research still at an early stage.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

In February 1942 Andrii Mel’nyk, leader of the more conservative wing ofthe OUN, wrote that ‘In the German military we see those who under thebanner of Adolf Hitler threw the Bolsheviks out of Ukraine.’32 In 1943,his OUN(m) strongly supported the establishment of a Ukrainian SS unit.Support also came from the Ukrainian People’s Republic government-in-exile. The Ukrainian Central Committee and the Greek Catholic Church ranan extensive recruitment campaign. In 1943–44 the OUN(b) and its armedwing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) carried out a brutal campaignof mass murder of the Polish, Jewish, and other minorities in Volhyniaand Galicia which claimed up to 100,000 lives and horrified contempo-rary observers.33 Metropolitan Andrei Sheptyts’kyi was greatly concerned bythe political violence of the OUN(b), which he referred to as ‘unserious

31 Frank Golczewski, ‘Shades of Grey: Reflections on Jewish-Ukrainian and German-UkrainianRelations in Galicia,’ in Ray Brandon and Wendy Lower (eds.), The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony,Memorialization, Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press in association with the United StatesHolocaust Memorial Museum, 2008, pp. 114–155; Marples, ‘Beyond the Pale?’; idem, Heroes and Villains,pp. 183–193; Olesya Khromeychuk, ‘Memory and Narrative of the Ukrainian Waffen SS: “War Criminals”or “Freedom Fighters,”’ paper presented at the Association for the study of Nationalities Convention,Columbia University, April 16, 2011. Ray Brandon is currently writing a Ph.D. dissertation on DmytroPaliiv, a fascist activist and ranking officer in the unit.32 Andrii Mel’nyk, ‘Ukraintsi!’ OUN(m) leaflet, dated January 1942, TsDAVOV Ukrainy, f. 46200, op. 3,spr. 378, l. 50. The OUN(m) was passionately anti-Semitic, particularly in 1941–42, which a reading of theOUN(m) organ Ukrains’ke slovo makes very clear. For some representative articles from the fall of 1941,see V. Veryha et al. (eds.), Dokumenty i materialy z istorii Organizatsii Ukrains’kykh Nationalistiv, tom10, ch. 2, Hazeta ‘Ukrains’ke slovo’ 1941 roku, Kyiv: Vydavnytsvo imeni Oleny Telihy, 2004, pp. 53–209.33 Grzegorz Motyka, Ukrainska partyzantka 1942–1960: Działnosc Organizacji UkrainskichNacjonalistów i Ukrainskiej Powstanczej Armii, Warsaw: RYTM, 2006, p. 411. The total numbers of docu-mented Polish OUN-UPA victims reach 91,200, 43,987 of whom are known by name. Ewa Siemaszko, Stanbadan nad ludobójstwem dokonanym na ludnosci polskiej przez Organizacje Nacjonalistów Ukrainskichi Ukrainska Powstancza Armie, in Bogusław Paz (ed.), Prawda Historyczna a Prawda Politycznaw badaniach naukowych: Przykład ludobójstwa na Kresach południowo-wschodniej Polski w latach1939–1946. Acta Universitatis Wratislaviensis 3300, Wrocław: Wydawnictwo uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego,2011, p. 333.

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people’ and ‘snot-nosed kids’ (smarkachi).34 Keeping young Galicians outof the UPA appears to have been one of the reasons why Sheptyts’kyiendorsed the Waffen-SS Galizien.35 During the first month of recruitmentover 80,000 Ukrainians volunteered for duty: 30,000 were rejected on thegrounds of questionable political reliability, and 20,000 for failing to meetthe physical requirements. Ultimately, 13,000–14,000 were accepted.36 Manyvolunteers were recruited from collaborationist formations.37

The Waffen-SS, the armed wing of the SS, was an elite formation.It eventually expanded to 38 Divisions under the command of HeinrichHimmler. By the end of the war, non-Germans constituted 60 percent ofits men. The initially strict ‘racial’ criteria for membership were relaxed asGermany’s military fortunes waned. A thwarted attempt to recruit Ukrainiansinto a Waffen-SS unit in October–November 1941 had put heavy emphasison the ‘racial’ quality of the recruits. In April 1943, no ‘racial’ commission wasestablished, but the Governor of the Distrikt Galizien, SS-ObergruppenführerOtto Wächter decided that Waffen-SS Galizien would accept volunteers fromfour of the five racial categories recognized by Nazi Germany.38

The organizers of the Waffen-SS Galizien emphasized the importance ofthe unit for Hitler’s New Europe and a Nazi victory: ‘All call-ups to Ukrainiansfor the Division have been geared towards their planned deployment, not forUkraine or Ukrainian culture, but rather as the contribution of the Ukrainianethnic group in the battle to defend against Bolshevism and for a new

34 John-Paul Himka, ‘Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky and the Holocaust,’ 6., Forthcoming, Polin 26,citing Mieczysław Adamczyk, Janusz Gmitruk, and Adam Koseski, eds., Ziemie Wschodnie. Raporty BiuraWschodniego Delegatury Rzadu na Kraj 1943–1944., Warsaw, Pułtusk: Muzeum Historii Polskiego RuchuLudowego, Wyzsza Szkoła Humanistyczna im. Aleksandra Gieysztora, 2005, p. 45.35 ‘[Sheptyts’kyi] was particularly concerned about how Ukrainians were being drawn into the destruc-tion process. He came to the conclusion in the summer of 1942 that the Nazis were even worse than thenBolsheviks. He was still able to cooperate with them when it was a matter of the lesser evil (a Waffen-SSdivision as opposed to unrestrained bands of nationalist youth). He was deeply appalled by murder andfeared mightily for the salvation of the flock under his care.’ Himka, ‘Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky andthe Holocaust,’ p. 24.36 Howard Margolian, Unauthorized Entry: The Truth about Nazi War Criminals in Canada,1946–1956, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000, p. 132; Golczewski, ‘Shades of Grey,’ 136. TheOUN(b) was initially negatively disposed to the unit, but that soon changed. Until October 30 1943, therehad been 70 desertions from the unit. At that point, Roman Shukhevych issued orders that OUN mem-bers who had volunteered for the Division could only leave as a result of a direct order of the OUN(b)commander. Michael James Melnyk, To Battle: The Formation and History of the 14th Galician Waffen-SSDivision, Solihull, UK: Helion & Company, 2002, pp. 19 and 347, citing Minutes of the Military Board,30 October 1943, ABFC and Lev Shankovskyj, ‘UPA and the Division “:Halychyna,”’ America, Philadelphia,(12–16 July 1954).37 Schutzmannschaften, the local collaborating police under Nazi occupation, was instrumental inthe mass murder of Ukrainian Jewry. On Waffen-SS Galizien officers with a background in Nachtigall,Roland, the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen, the Ukrainian Galician Army and the Army of the Ukrainian People’sRepublic, see Bolianovs’kyi, Dyviziia ‘Halychyna’. pp. 61, 75, 77–81, 89–93.38 Bolianovs’kyi, Dyviziia ‘Halychyna,’ pp. 28, 56–57. On the SS ‘racial experts’ assessment on theracial characteristics of the Galician Ukrainians, see. ‘14. Galizische SS-Freiw. Div. An alle deutschenFührer der Division!’ Instructions issued from the Division Staff Quarter, 1 February 1944, TsDAVOVUkrainy, f. 4620, op. 3, spr. 378, ll. 12–17.

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Europe.’39 The volunteers were taught that they were part of a chosen elite,which was fighting a primitive, racialized enemy, a ‘deadly danger, whichthreatens us from the Asiatic steppes’ and that they were defending the ‘tra-ditions of Galician Ukrainianhood in the struggle for the common culture ofall people of the honorable and beautiful part of the world, which we callEurope. To get accepted into the Waffen-SS Galizien is a great honor.’40

The idea to establish a Galizian SS division originated with Wächter,who proposed this to Himmler on 1 March 1943.41 In organizing Waffen-SSGalizien, Wächter worked closely with Volodymyr Kubijovyc, an enthusiasticproponent of ethnic cleansing. In April 1941 he requested that Hans Frankset up an ethnically pure Ukrainian enclave in the General government,free from Jews and Poles.42 Kubijovyc benefited from Aryanization of Jewishproperty and published anti-Semitic materials in the collaborationist press.43

He asked Governor General Hans Frank to have Aryanized money go toUkrainians, as it had ended up in Jewish hands, he argued, ‘only throughruthless breach of law on the part of the Jews and their exploitation ofmembers of the Ukrainian people.’44 On 2 May 1943 Kubijovyc declaredhimself ready to take up arms for the Waffen-SS.45 On 28 April 1943, the dayof the proclamation of the formation, he stated:

Today, for Ukrainians in Galicia, is a very historic day, because today’sAct of State one of the most coveted wishes of the Ukrainian people isrealized—to fight against Bolshevism with weapons in our hands. . . .

This wish was the result of the deeper conviction, that it is our duty notto stay neutral in the great fight for building the new European order, and

39 Letter to Himmler, 5 August 1943, ‘Betr. SS Schützendivision Galizien, BA-KO NS 19\1785’, a letterincorrectly attributed to Wächter, but likely written by one of his close associates, cited in M. J. Melnyk,To Battle, p. 53.40 ‘Vkazivki dlia okhotnykiv SS Strilets’koi Dyvizii Halychyna,’ and ‘Merkblatt für Freiwillige derSS-Schutzen-Division Galizien,’ TsDAVOV Ukrainy, f. 4620, op. 3, spr. 378, l. 31, 32.41 Basil Dmytryshyn, ‘The Nazis and the SS Volunteer Division ‘ “Galicia,’American Slavic and EastEuropean Review 15(1) (1 February 1956) pp. 3–6. Wächter had been in charge of the ghettoization andexpulsion of the Jews of Krakow. In the fall of 1941 he was a leading proponent of ‘total Jewish exter-mination’ by gassing. Robin O’Neil, Belzec: Prototype for the Final Solution. Hitler’s Answer to the JewishQuestion, chapter 5. E-book, http://www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/belzec1/bel050.html (accessed 30 July2011).42 Jan T. Gross, Polish Society under German Occupation: The General gouvernement, 1939–1944,Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979, pp. 186, 190.43 John-Paul Himka, ‘Ethnicity and the Reporting of Mass Murder: Krakivs’ki visti. The NKVD Murdersof 1941, and the Vinnytsia Exhumation,’ paper presented at the University of Alberta Holocaust workshop,14 Jan. 2005, 19, citing Volodymyr Kubijovyc, ‘Pered maiestatom neprovynnoi krovy,’ Krakivs’ki visti,8 Jul. 1941.44 Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe, ‘Celebrating Fascism and War Criminality in Edmonton: The PoliticalMyth and Cult of Stepan Bandera in Multicultural Canada,’ Kakanien Revisited, 29 December (2010), p. 7.45 ‘I, Dr. Kubijovyc, Volodymyr,. . . . Declare, that I am ready, as a military volunteer, the join theranks of the Waffen-SS Division Galizien and to take part in its military activities. I know, that on thebasis of this declaration I oblige myself to perform every minute quickly the orders of to the Waffen SSGalizien.’ TsDAVOV Ukrainy, f. 4620, op. 3, spr. 378, l. 18 (in German) and l. 19 (in Ukrainian).

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what we can do for the victory of the new Europe. On these principleswe have based our active role in cooperating with the German gov-ernment. We did everything that was possible. I have mentioned thevoluntary departure of hundreds of thousands of workers to Germany.Their conscious contribution of quotas, the collection of winter clothingfor the German armed forces, their large donations of money for mil-itary purposes show their readiness . . . We realize the great meaningof this greatest decision for our people. Therefore, we want to ensurethat it will be the best. The formation of the Galician-Ukrainian divi-sion within the framework of the SS, is for us not only a distinction,but our responsibility that we will continue to [support] and maintainthis active decision, in cooperation with the German state organizations,until the victorious end of the war. I ask you, governor, to accept ourassurances that we will fulfill our responsibilities. This historic day wasmade possible by the conditions to create a worthy opportunity for theUkrainians of Galicia, to fight arm in arm with the heroic German soldiersof the Army and the Waffen-SS against Bolshevism, your and our deadlyenemy. We thank you from our heart. Of course we ought to thank theGreat Führer of the united Europe for recognizing our participation inthe war, that he approved your initiative and agreed to the creation ofthe Galicia division.46

The establishment of the Waffen-SS Galizien on 18 July 1943 saw muchjubilation. Kost’ Pankivs’ky joined Governor Wächter and Alfred Bisanz, liai-son for Ukrainian questions in the General government, in addressing thelocal SS leadership, the Ukrainian SS volunteers and enthusiastic youngmen in the blue uniforms of the nationalist scouting organization Plast,which provided many of the volunteers to become officers in the division.47

(Figure 3)The ‘Jewish question’ played a central role in the Weltanschauung of

the Waffen-SS. In a speech to the officers of the Waffen-SS Galizien on 16May 1944 Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler bragged to the officers of theWaffen-SS Galizien about how the ‘loss’ of the Jews had changed Galicia tothe better:

[T]he designation Galician has been chosen according to the name ofyour beautiful homeland, of which you can be truly proud. Your home-land has become even more beautiful—and I can safely say this—since

46 M. J. Melnyk. To Battle, 27, citing Krakivs’ki Visti, 1 May 1943, No. 89; Vol’f-Ditrikh Haike,Ukrains’ka Dyviziia ‘Halychyna’: Istoriia formuvannia i boiovykh dii u 1943–45 rokakh, z predmovoiuVolodymyra Kubijovycha, Zapysky naukovoho tovarystva im. Shevchenka, tom. 188, Toronto, Paris,Munich: Bratsva kol. Voiakiv 1-oi Ukrains’koi Dyvizii UNA, 1970, pp. 225–227.47 Kubijovyc was scheduled to address the Waffen-SS volunteers, but was replaced by Pankivs’kyi.M. J. Melnyk, To Battle, pp. 44, 50, 346; ‘Vid’izd na vyshkil,’ L’vivski visti: Shchodennyk dlia dystryktuHalychyny, 169 (539)(29 July 1943) p. 1.

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FIGURE 3 Parade before the university building in Lviv, July 18, 1943. In the center, underthe coat of arms, Governor Otto Wächter. To his right, in dark suit and glasses, VolodymyrKubijovyc. First row, Alfred Bisanz, in dark suit and raised right arm, and the members of themilitary board.

it lost, through our intervention, those inhabitants who often sullied thename of Galicia, namely the Jews.48

Regarding the Polish minority, Himmler joked that he would be quitepopular, was he to give the Division free hands to exterminate them. Seenin light of the Huta Pieniacka massacre, more of which below, it indicatesthat punishing crimes committed against this group would not subsequentlyhave very high priority.

The third thing I demand of you is obedience. There is something I wantto tell you. Obedience starts the moment you receive an order to dosomething you find unpleasant. I know if I ordered the Division to exter-minate the Poles in this area or that area, I would be a very popular man.But if I tell you or give you the order that the Division is to follow this orthat route to the front in full battle order, and fight against the Russians,than that is what will be done. For the Führer will manage to handle

48 Heinrich Himmler, ‘Rede des Reichsführers-SS am 16.5.44 vor dem Führerkorps der 14.GalizischenSS-Freiw. Division,’ and ‘Promova Raikhsfirera Hainrikha Himmlera do starshyn Dyvizii,’ 14. SS-Dobr.Dyv. ‘Halychyna,’ Informatsyvna sluzhba, VI, Postii, dnia 17.5.44, TsDAVOV Ukrainy, f. 4620, op. 3, spr.378, ll. 1–9, copy. The original is located in the BA-KO, R 52 III/3c. A sound recording of the first partof Himmler’s speech, ‘Promova H. Himmlera do dobrovol’tsiv SS Halychyna’ is available on YouTube,http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTuFEGbQua8 (accessed 25 January 2011).

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the Poles, they who have ill-treated you the same way as they have ill-treated our fellow Germans in Poland. You do nothing before the orderis given.49

As an integral part of their training, the Ukrainian volunteers receivedtwo hours of education in National Socialist Weltanschauung every week.50

The units were trained in facilities linked to concentration camps.51

In his memoirs, Vasyl’ Weryha reminiscences about his training as anNCO ‘at the administrative-management Vervaltungsschule in Dachau, nearMunich. 140 of us went there, among them former officers of various ranks inthe Austrian and Ukrainian armies, in order to go through a re-education forofficers.’52 Veryha recalls how the inmates of the Dachau concentration campwere forced to remove their hats for the Ukrainian SS recruits.53 Like theVerwaltungsschule in Dachau, both the Heidelager and Hradischko traininggrounds were constructed as adjacent to forced labor camps. The Waffen-SS Galizien occasionally interfered in the running of the Heidelager camp.It would not have been unusual for Waffen-SS recruits to have helped withguarding or being trained in prisoner escort in the camps.54

At the end of August 1943 the Ukrainian Waffen-SS recruits received tat-toos indicating their blood groups under their left arm.55 On August 29,after the completion of the military and ideological training, the recruitswere sworn in at the Heidelager, in the presence of SS-ObergruppenführerWächter and representatives of the Ukrainian Central Committee. The

49 Ibid. According to the Waffen-SS veterans Julian Temnyk and Bohdan Pidhayny’s own account,published in the 1960s and 1980s, Waffen-Obersturmführer Julian Temnyk expressed dissatisfaction withHimmler’s remarks. According to an affidavit, dated 1 August 1989, Temnyk had said that ‘Let it bepermissible in your presence, Herr Reichsführer, for me to state that we Ukrainians are not preparing toslaughter the Poles, and that is not why we voluntarily enlisted into the Division Galicia.’ M. J. Melnyk,To Battle, 111, fn. 129, 130. There is no contemporary record of a rebuttal from Temnyk. Given thestrictly hierarchical organization of the SS, it is highly unlikely that Himmler would have been corrected,in public, by a Ukrainian of much lower rank.50 M. J. Melnyk, To Battle, 57, citing Nachrichtendienst für die Leiter der Abteiling VI, II. Schulungoder Erziehung, p. 5, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive (USHMMA), RG 48.004m, Reel5, SS-Ausbildungsbatallion z.b.V., Karton 3, File II, 1943, II.51 M. J. Melnyk, To Battle, p. 95.52 Vasyl’ Veryha, Pid krylamy vyzvol’nykh dum: Spomyny pidkhorunzhoho dyvizii ‘Halychyna’, Kyiv:Vydavnytstvo imeni Oleny Telihy, 2007, p. 26. On the training of officers in Dachau, see Bolianovs’kyi,Dyviziia ‘Halychyna’, pp. 134, 145.53 Veryha, Pid krylami, 27. There was a network of camps at Dachau, known as the Kauferingconcentration camps. Hannah Arendt writes that Eichmann in 1933 attended an SS camp in Dachau‘which had nothing to do with the concentration camp there.’ Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem:A Report on the Banality of Evil. Revised and Enlarged Edition, New York: Penguin Books, 1994, p. 34.While Veryha’s 2007 reminiscences do not specify the details of which of the subsidiary camps the trainingtook place, they demonstrate that, at the very least, he was aware of the concentration camp system andthe nature of the National Socialist system.54 Margolian, Unauthorized entry, pp. 134, 297.55 The tattoo was unique to the Waffen-SS and the Fallschirmjäger (Parachutists) to assist with bloodtransfusion in case they were wounded in combat. J. Melnyk, To Battle, p. 57.

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ceremony started with a field service, led by the unit’s military chaplain,Dr. Vasyl’ Laba,56 accompanied by a choir. Thereafter the SS recruits took asolemn oath:

‘I swear before God this holy oath, that in the battle against Bolshevism,I will give absolute obedience to the commander in chief of the GermanArmed Forces Adolf Hitler, and as a brave soldier I will always beprepared to lay down my life for this oath.’57

The oath to Hitler was obligatory until the last month of the Division’sexistence.58 There is no overt indication that the unit in any way wasdedicated to Ukrainian statehood, let alone independence. The volunteerscommitted themselves to a German victory, the New European Order, andto Adolf Hitler personally.

ATROCITIES

The division was led by German officers who had been directly involvedin the perpetration of the Holocaust and atrocities against Belarusian andUkrainian civilians. The commander from 20 October 1943 until the endof the war was SS-Oberführer Fritz Freitag. A fanatical National Socialist,Freitag had made his career through the police establishment. At the initialphases of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Freitag had served withinthe command staff of Reichsführer-SS to which he reported directly. He hadcommanded the 1st SS Motorized Infantry brigade, which operated separatelyor alongside the Einsatzgruppen, a unit involved in ruthless subjugation of

56 Vasyl’ Laba (1887–1976) served in the Waffen-SS Division Galizien 1943–45, with the rank ofSturmbannführer, or major. He served as vicar at the Edmonton eparchy from 1950 and became hon-orary member of the Ukrainian War Veterans Association in Edmonton. O. S. Rubl’ov, ‘LABA Vasyl’Istoriia Ukrainy, Instytut Istorii Ukrainy,http://www.history.org.ua/?l=EHU&verbvar=Laba_V&abcvar=15&bbcvar=1 (accessed 20 June 2011); Mykhailo Bairak, Ukrains’ka Strilets’ka Hromada v Edmontoni,Edmonton: Ukrainian War Veterans’ Association- Edmonton Branch, 1978, p. 10.57 M. J. Melnyk, To Battle, 68, 57, citing Kdo. Amt d. Waffen-SS: Org.Tgb. Nr. 982/43 g Kdos. V.30.7.1943 Aufstellung der SS-Freiw. Division ‘Galizien.’58 Alti Rodal, unpublished study, ‘Nazi War Criminals in Canada: The Historical and Policy Settingfrom the 1940s to the Present,’ prepared for the Commission of Inquiry on Nazi War Criminals in Canada(the Deschênes Commission) in 1986: Chapter XII, Part 3, p. 8. Accessible at Library and Archives Canada,RG33, 1986, ‘Rodal Report.’ In February 1945, the SS planned to change the wording of the oath, ‘withoutchanging its ideals’ to the following wording:

‘I swear before God this holy oath, that in battle against Bolshevism, for the liberation ofmy Ukrainian people, my Ukrainian homeland [Heimat], the commander in chief of theGerman Armed Forces and all fighters of the young European peoples against Bolshevism,Adolf Hitler, unconditional obedience and as a brave soldier I will always be prepared tolay down my life for this oath.’ The wording of the oath was never changed. ‘Betr. GeneralShandruk,’ Der Chef des SS-Hauptamtes to Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, 6 February1945, Bundesarchiv Lichterfelde, NS 19/544 pp. 87, 89. Thanks to Ray Brandon for thisreference.

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the local populations and mass murder of Jews. In a typical entry dated24 August 1941, Freitag diligently reported ‘114 prisoners taken, 283 Jewsshot, and a haul of captured booty amounting to only 2 guns, 3 heavyand 6 light machine-guns.’59 Among the commanding officers of Waffen-SSGalizien was also the Ukrainian-born Volksdeutsche SS-HauptsturmführerHeinrich Wiens, who had served with Einsatzgruppen D, which carried outthe annihilation of Jews, communists, and partisans in occupied easternUkraine. Wiens personally took part in mass executions.60 Another offi-cer of the Waffen-SS Galizien was SS-Obersturmbannführer Franz Magall,who had been involved in atrocities in Belarus at the beginning of thewar.61 The Waffen-SS Galizien worked alongside one of the most brutalcounter-insurgency units of Nazi Germany, the dreaded SS-SonderbattalionDirlewanger, a unit which included rapists, murderers, and the criminallyinsane, which carried out brutal anti-partisan activities in Belarus and Poland,and the no less brutal suppression of the Warsaw uprising in 1944.62 Waffen-SS Galizien and Dirlewanger transferred officers between their units: Magallhad served in the SS-Sonderbattalion Dirlewanger before he was appointedthe chief supply officer of Waffen-SS Galizien on 2 March, 1944.63

Waffen-SS Galizien had ten officers and NCOs from Nachtigall, andfour from Roland.64 Three held positions of command at the battalion

59 M. J. Melnyk, To Battle, p. 64, citing ‘Brigadegefechtsstand, den 29.8.1941, Tätigkeitsbericht fürdie Zeit vom 24.8.1941/12.00 Uhr-29.8.1941/12.00 Uhr,’ in Unsere Ehre Heisst Treue, Kriegstagebuch desKommandostabes Reichsführer-SS-Kav.-Brigade und von Sonderkommandos der SS, Vienna, Frankfurt,Zürich: Europa, 1965, pp. 122–123.60 Wiens served in Sonderkommando 10a as a translator from June 1941. A few weeks after theGerman invasion of the Soviet Union he was appointed Teilkommandoführer, leading a group of tenmen in mass executions. In the spring of 1942 Wiens was transferred to Einsatzkommando 12 in theStalino (today Donetsk) area, where he personally carried out mass executions. M. J. Melnyk, To Battle,pp. 106–107, fn. 353.61 M. J. Melnyk, To Battle, p. 66, citing Unsere Ehre Heisst Treue, (Bericht über den Verlauf derPripjet-Aktion’, 12 August 1941, pp. 227–230; Ruth-Bettina Birn, ‘Zweierlei Wirklichkeit: Fallspiele zurPartisanbekämpfung im Osten, in Bernd Wegner (ed.), Zwei Wege nach Moskau: vom Hitler-Stalin-Paktbis zum “Unternehmen Barbarossa,” ’, Munich: Piper, 1991, p. 275. M. J. Melnyk writes that ‘One punitivesweep conducted in these swamps between 27 July and 11 August 1941, ultimately accounted for thedeath of 6,526 “bandits” and “plunderers”, i.e., assumed partisans or those who had assisted them. In hisreport on this action Magill noted that: “Driving women and children into swamps was not as successfulas it should have been, since the swamps were not deep enough for them to sink. At a depth of onemeter, most cases reached solid ground (probably sand) so drowning was not possible.’ ” M. J. Melnyk,To Battle, pp. 112–113, citing HW 16/101, CX/MSS/Q.48, 21/3/44, PRO.62 This cooperation took place following the transfer of the unit to Slovakia, where they fought rebelstogether with the 18th SS Volunteer Panzer Grenadier Division Horst Wessel, SS-Sturmbrigade DirlewangerSS, the Vlasov detachment and other SS and SD formations until 5 February 1945. Bolianovs’kyi, Dyviziia‘Halychyna’, 274; Philip W. Blood, Hitler’s Bandit Hunters: The SS and the Nazi Occupation of Europe,Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2008, p. 270. Christian Ingrao, The SS Dirlewanger Brigade: The Historyof the Dark Hunters, trans. Phoebe Green, New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2011; French L. MacLean, TheCruel Hunters: SS-Sonderkommando Dirlewanger, Hitler’s Most Notorious Anti-Partisan Unit, Atglen, PA:Schiffer Publishers, 1998.63 M. J. Melnyk, To Battle, p. 67.64 Bolianovs’kyi, Dyviziia ‘Halychyna’, p. 61.

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FIGURE 4 http://forum.ck.ua/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=151201 Evhen Pobihushchyi, same date,Lviv.

level, two of them with a background in Schutzmannschaft Battalion201—former Waffen-SS Hauptsturmführer Mikhailo Bryhidyr, and Waffen-SS Sturmbannführer Evhen Pobihushchyi, ‘a passionate soldier,’ accordingto his course commanders.65 Evhen Pobihushchyi became military liaisonto the central OUN leadership (Provid). (Figure 4)66 Involved in brutalanti-partisan operations in Belarus in 1942, Schutzmannschaft Battalion201 had carried out indiscriminate and disproportionate violence againstcivilians.67 Its previous incarnation, the Nachtigall battalion, took part inmass shootings of Jews in the summer of 1941.68 The men of the dissolvedSchutzmannschaft Battalion 204 and 206, approximately 250 German-speaking men, were attached to the fifth Wachmannmanschaft Battalionof the Waffen-SS Galizien. Schutzmannschaft Battalion 204 had been pro-viding guards for the concentration camp Pustków. Both Schutzmannschaft

65 B. Matsiv, (ed.), Ukrains’ka Dyviziia ‘Halychyna’, 16; M. J. Melnyk, To Battle, pp. 65–66, 347, citingNA A3343-SSO-384A.66 ‘Dopovidna zastupnyka nachal’nyka uprvlinnia 2-N Ministerstva derzhavnoi bezpeki URSRpolkovnyka Shorbalki ministerovi MDB URSR Mykoli Koval’chuku shchoda spivpratsi ounivtsi z rozvid-kamy zakhidnykh derzhav’, December 1951. Volodymyr Serhiichuk (ed.), Stepan Bandera u dokumentakhradians’kykh orhaniv derzhavnoi bezpeky (1939–1959), tom III, Kyiv: PP Serhiichuk M. I. 2009, pp. 146,148.67 Per Anders Rudling, “Szkolenie w mordowaniu: Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201 i HauptmannRoman Szuchewycz na Białorusi 1942 roku,” in Bogusław Paz (ed.), Prawda historyczna a prawdapolityczna w badaniach naukovych: Przykład ludobójstwa na kresach południowej-wschodniej Polski wlatach 1939–1946 . Wrocław: Wydawnictwo uniwersytety Wrocławskiego, 2011, 191–212. Other soldiersof Schutzmannschaft battalion 201 were reorganized into Schutzmannschaft battalion 57, which likewisewere involved in the burning villages and killing civilians in Belarus in 1943. HDA SBU f. 5, Delo 65509,tom 5, ll. 239, 296, 345, 348, 353, 357, 374, 384, 386.68 See the account of Nachtigall soldier Viktor Khar’kiv (Khmara). TsDAVO Ukrainy, f. 3833, op. 1,spr. 57, ark. 17.

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battalions 204 and 206, writes Howard Margolian, ‘appear to have seenprior service in Ukrainian irregular formations that were known to haveperpetrated atrocities against Jews and communists during the early days ofGerman occupation.’69

Himmler had ordered the establishment of five ‘Polizei-Schützen-Regimenten’ to be armed and supplied by the central bureau of theWaffen-SS (SS-Führungshauptampt) in coordination with the HSSPf ofUkraine and the Ordungspolizei (Orpo), which, ‘for psychological and polit-ical reasons will be designated Galizisches SS-Freiwilligen Regimenten withthe numbers 4–8.’70 HSSPf stands for the SS and Police Leader, and answeredonly to Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Hitler.

These units consisted of people who had volunteered for the Waffen-SSGalizien, but had not made the first cut; they were integrated into the unitat a later date. The fourth and fifth regiments, which stood under the controlof the Orpo, were deployed for security duties.71 Galizische SS-Freiwilligen-Regiment 4, with its 1,264 men was commanded by the Schutzpolizei majorSiegfried Binz, transferred from Belarus, where he had commanded thePolice Battalion 307, a unit involved in indiscriminate terror. His units hadtaken part in the brutal anti-partisan operations ‘Hamburg,’ ‘Altona,’ ‘Franz,’‘Erntefest I,’ ‘Erntefest II,’ ‘Hornung’ and ‘Föhn.’72

THE HUTA PIENIACKA MASSACRE

During the OUN-UPA campaign of mass murder of the Polish minority inVolhynia and Eastern Galicia, the Polish village of Huta Pieniacka became arefuge for Polish and Jewish survivors from surrounding villages. Desperatelyseeking allies, Huta Pieniacka cooperated with pro-Soviet partisans in theregion. A Polish village in Eastern Galicia, sheltering Jews, and an outpostfor pro-Soviet partisans caught the attention of the Waffen-SS Galizien aswell as the UPA.

The most serious atrocity attributed to the unit, the HutaPieniacka massacre, was committed, according to Ukrainian and Polish

69 Golczewski, ‘Shades of Grey,’ p. 140, citing Stanisław Zabierowski, Pustków Hitlerowskieobozy wyniszczenia w Sluzbie Poligonu, Rzeszów: RSW ‘Prasa-Ksazka-Ruch,’ 1981, p. 34; Margolian,Unauthorized Entry, pp. 133–134.70 Bolianovs’kyi, Dyviziia ‘Halychyna’, pp. 217–218; M. J. Melnyk, To Battle, pp. 61–62, citingHimmler’s circular to all officers: Der Reichsführer-SS Tgb. Nr. 35\88\43g Feld-kommandostelle 24 June1943. Himmler File Documents (HFD), Imperial War Museum, London, H/10/37.71 Ihor Iliushyn, ‘Boivi dii OUN i UPA na antypols’komu fronti,’ in Stanislav Kul’chyts’kyi et al(eds.), Orhanizatsiia ukrains’kykh natsionalistiv i Ukrains’ka postans’ka armiia: Istorychni narysy, Kyiv:Naukova Dumka, 2005, p. 284. M. J. Melnyk, To Battle, p. 63.72 J. Melnyk, To Battle, p. 62, citing Der SS- und Polizeiführer in Weissruthenien, Minsk, den 30.Märtz 1943, 00061 and den Reichsführer SS und Chef der Deutschen Polizei im Reichskommisariat desInnern, Betr. Versorgungsweise Beförderung des Majors d. Sch. Siegfried Binz, geb. Am 12.3.1898 inOstseebad Binz a/Rügen, Kommandeur des I./23, Heimatstandort: Recklinghausen. Bezug:O-Kdo. IIP. I (1a) 37/43 vom 13.3.43.

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government commissions, by the fourth regiment under the command ofSturmbannführer Binz.73 A 2003 investigation by the Polish Institute ofNational Remembrance into the massacre concluded that:

the crime was committed by the 4th battalion of the 14th division onFebruary 28. On that day, early in the morning, soldiers of this division,dressed in white, masking outfits, surrounded the village. The village wascross-fired by artillery. SS-men of the 14th Division of the SS “Galizien”entered the village, shooting the civilians rounded up at a church. Thecivilians, mostly women and children, were divided and locked in barnsthat were set on fire. Those who tried to run away were killed. Witnessesinterrogated by the prosecutors of the Head Commission described themorbid details of the act. The crime was committed against women,children, and newborn babies.74

In 2005, the Institute of History at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences arrivedat the same conclusion—that the 4th SS Police regiment indeed killed thecivilian inhabitants in Huta Pieniacka.

The SS detachment’s attack on the village was the result of the denun-ciation to the Ukrainian police by the population in Pidhirtsiv, whichinformed the Germans that the Poles of Huta Pieniacka were hidingJews, supported Bolshevik partisans, stored weapons and so on. TheUkrainian SS men arrived in the village to conduct an inspection. Whenthey began robbing the population, speaking Ukrainian to each otherthe Poles took them for bandits in disguise, and began defending them-selves. Then, a Ukrainian squadron of the SS arrived in the villagefrom Pidhirtsiv. After having encircled the village, it began to murderpeople.75

There is an emerging consensus among historians on the participationof units, linked to Waffen-SS Galizien in the ‘pacification’ of Huta Pieniacka.The disagreements are mostly concerned with the scale of the massacre.Agreeing on the involvement of Waffen-SS Galizien–affiliated soldiers andon the number of farmsteads burned down—172, the Ukrainian and Polish

73 Bolianovs’kyi, Dyviziia ‘Halychyna,’ 218, citing TsDAVOV Ukrainy, f. 3971, op. 1, spr. 7, ark. 43.74 ‘Investigation into the Crime Committed at the Village of Huta Pieniacka,’ published18 November 2003. The Institute of National Remembrance. Commission for the Prosecutionof Crimes against the Polish Nation, http://ipn.gov.pl/portal/en/19/188/Investigation_into_the_Crime_committed_at_the_Village_of_Huta_Pieniacka.html (accessed 4 April 2011). On Huta Pieniacka, seealso Howard Margolian, Unauthorized Entry: The Truth about Nazi War Criminals in Canada,1946–1956, Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2000, p. 134; ‘Sledztwo ws. mordu w Hucie Pieniackiej,’Wirtualna Polska, 28 February 2009, http://wiadomosci.wp.pl/kat,1342,title,Sledztwo-ws-mordu-w-Hucie-Pieniackiej,wid,10895470,wiadomosc.html (accessed 13 August 2010).75 Iliushyn, ‘Boivi dii OUN i UPA na antypols’komu fronti,’ pp. 283–284, citing Archiwum Akt Nowych,Warsaw, Sygn. 202/II/73. – K. 89.

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commissions disagree on the number of victims. The Ukrainian commissionstates that nearly 500 people were killed, and that nearly 50 people man-aged to save their lives.76 The Polish Institute for National Memory gives amuch higher number—700 to 1,500 people, including in this count about1,000 Huta Pieniacka residents, plus people from surrounding villages whohad sought refuge in the village.77 Even Volodomyr V’’iatrovych, claiming‘700 to 1,200 Polish victims,’ cites documents from the archives of MykolaLebed, the leader of the OUN(b) security services (SB OUN) that ‘On24 February 1944 the Ukrainian SS-men wiped out the entire village HutaPieniacka, that center of Polish banditry. All males were shot, the womendecimated.’78

The sources concur that there were two attacks on the village. The firstone, on February 23 failed and two Ukrainian soldiers were killed. A secondassault on the village followed on February 28, in which 8 to 12 Ukrainianswere wounded, one of whom fatally. The village was then brutally ‘pacified,’its residents murdered and the village burned in its entirety. The eyewitnessZvi Weigler links the massacre to the sheltering of Jews.79

At six o’clock in the morning Germans and Ukrainian SS men arrive. TheJews, who at that hour were at the edge of the forest, saw them com-ing but did not move. They apparently did not believe that the soldiers

76 Ilyushyn, ‘Boiv dii OUN i UPA na antypol’skomu fronti,’ p. 284.77 Instytut Pamieci Narodowej, Komisja Scigalnia Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu wKrakowie, Referat ‘Zbrodnia w Hucie Pieniackiej w swietle ustalen sledztwa Oddziałowej Komisji ScigalniaZbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu w Krakowie,’ Krakow. 25 Nov 2010, p. 5.78 Volodymyr V’’iatrovych, Druha pol’sko-ukrains’ka viina 1942–1947, Kyiv: Vydavnychyi dim‘Kyevo-Mohylians’ka akademiia’ and Tsentr doslidzhen’ vyzvol’noho rukhu, 2011, p. 168, citing ArkivTsentru doslidzhen’ vyzvol’noho rukhu (henceforth ATsDVR), F. 9, T. 6, Od. zb. 4, Ark. 43–89. The Centerfor the Study of the Liberation Movement in L’viv is an OUN(b) front organization, the propagandamaterials of which need to be treated with great caution. V’’iatrovych has downplayed the OUN(b)’santi-Semitism, dismissed OUN participation in the Holocaust as Soviet propaganda, even defended thekilling of civilians. See Taras Kurylo and John-Paul Himka [Ivan Khymka], ‘Iak OUN stavylasia do ievreiv?Rozdumy nad knyzhkoiu Volodymyra V’’iatrovycha Stavlennia OUN do ievreiv: formuvannia pozytii natli katastrofy,’ Ukraina Moderna 13 (2008) pp. 252–265 and Per Anders Rudling, The OUN, the UPA,and the Holocaust: A Study in the Manufacturing of Historical Myths. The Carl Beck Papers in Russianand East European Studies 2107., Pittsburgh: University Center for Russian and East European Studies,2011) pp. 28–31.79 Zvi Weigler, ‘Two Polish Villages Razed for Extending Help to Jews and Partisans,’ Yad waShemBulletin, 1 (1957) 19–20. Also, see the deposition made by Feiwel Auerbach, a Jew from Sasów, shortlyafter the war. ‘There were 30 of us [Jews] in the forest. We hid in Huta Werchobuska and Huta Pieniacka.The Polish inhabitants of those villages helped us. The peasants were very poor and were themselveshungry but they shared with us their last bits of food. We stayed there from July 1943 until March1944. Thanks to them we are still alive. When there were manhunts, the village reeve warned us. Once500 Germans encircled the forest, but since they were afraid of entering deep into the forest they set theirdogs on us. We were saved because our Polish friends warned us of the impending danger. Because of adenunciation [by the Ukrainian police] all of the villagers of Huta Pieniacka and Huta Werchobuska werekilled. Some of them were burned alive in a barn. The village was burned to the ground.’ Archive ofthe Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw, no. 301/1200, cited in Mark Paul, A Tangled Web: Polish-JewishRelations in Wartime Northeastern Poland, Part III., Toronto: PEFINA Press, 2009, http://www.glaukopis.pl/pdf/czytelnia/Tangled_Web_3.pdf (accessed 12 June 2011), p. 34, n. 41

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were coming to literally murder them. The Germans and Ukrainianssurrounded the village, began to fire into it with machine guns and tothrow hand grenades. Only a few of the farmers succeeded in escapingto the forest. The Jews stood at a distance of a kilometer or so and saweverything. After firing and throwing hand grenades from the outskirts,the murderers went into the village, assembled all the farmers togetherwith their families and locked them up in the barns. They even lockedthe cattle in the stables. Then they set fire to the entire village. From adistance we heard the cries and the shrieks as well as the lowing of thecows. The German bandits stood guard to make sure that no living thing,human or animal, would escape from the burning buildings. The villageburned all day and only at night did the murderers leave.80

Contemporary Polish sources reported that Huta Pieniacka was burnedas a result of the presence of pro-Soviet partisans who were trying to con-vince the population to join them. The partisans apparently also carriedout raids in the area, stealing horses, livestock, and food from the localpopulation, which the population in the surrounding area came to blameon the residents of Huta Pieniacka. The Polish underground reported tothe government-in-exile that ‘In the fighting with our detachments and themurdering of Poles, the detachment Haliczyna [Galizien], stationed in theZborów area near Pidkamin on February 27 burned the Polish village ofHuta Piemowska (sic) and murdered about one hundred people, refugeeswho were hiding there.’81

The Polish exile government in London ordered the local Poles not tohave any contacts with pro-Soviet partisans, other than as a reserve, and toregard the Ukrainian SS the same way as the Germans.82 A report sent bythe underground Armia Krajowa to the Polish government in exile offers asimilar description of the massacre, clearly designating Ukrainian SS men asthe perpetrators.

On February 27, 44 [sic] at 5.00 AM the 14th Division of the Ukrainian SSsurrounded the village Huta Pieniacka from three sides, shooting at thehouses from a distance, then set some buildings on fire and then enteredthe village, plundering all the belongings of the inhabitants. The peoplewere gathered in the church or shot in the houses. Those gathered inthe church—men, women and children—were taken outside in groups,children killed in front of their parents. Some men and women wereshot in the cemetery, others were gathered in barns, where they wereshot. The village was completely burned down. The only people who

80 Weigler, Two Polish Villages Razed, pp. 19–20.81 ‘Wprowadzam numeracje tyg. Meldunku sytuac,’ No. 515/1, 23 March 1944 sent to the Polishgovernment-in-exile in London, p. 1. 1944. A copy of this report can be found in the Huta Pieniacka Casefiles at the Cracow Regional Office of the Polish Main Commission for the Investigation of Crimes againstthe Polish Nation. Huta Piemowska is a misprint. No such village existed.82 ‘Wprowadzam numeracje tyg. Meldunku sytuac,’ No. 515/1, 23 March 1944, p. 2.

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saved themselves were those who on finding out about the approachingUkrainian SS, managed to hide in the forests (only men) or those whopretended to be dead or managed to hide in potato holes in the base-ments. Right now it is difficult to establish how many survived as theyspread themselves around the area. Many of the injured with burnedarms and legs were being treated—impossible to say how many–by peo-ple from surrounding villages who took them to their homes after the SSdivision left.” This was reported by Uta WSK from Huta Pieniacka whosurvived, badly burned. The action of the SS was to be in revenge for thekilling of 4 SS men on February 23. “About 60 men entered the village inthe evening and began to plunder the houses. Since they wore Germanuniforms and spoke Ukrainian, they were taken for a disguised groupof criminals. Thus the local defense action started, killing two for sure,and wounding several others. Seeing that the Ukrainian SS came to thearea, it is possible that such cases may repeat themselves in every Polishvillage.”83

Testimonies by UPA men and survivors, gathered by the Soviet agenturatells a similar story as that of the Polish underground:

On 28 February 1944 around five and six in the morning Ukrainiannationalists together with troops from the division “SS-Galizien” sur-rounded the Polish village of Huta Pieniacka in the Ponikovestkii raionof the L’viv oblast, opening fire upon the village. After they entered thevillage, they gathered all of the residents of said village on the squarein front of the church, forced them into groups by beating them, led thegroups into the barns, locked the barns, then poured gasoline and burnedthe barns with the people inside. Anyone trying to escape was shot andthrown into the fire. In this way, more than 700 Polish people were shotand burned, and 120 houses with adjoining structures were also burned.Livestock, bread and other property were taken away by the bandits.

The Huta Pieniacka resident Franko Iosifivich Kobelianskii explainedthat “early in the morning on 28 February 1944, two rockets were firedupon our village, thereafter our village came under fire. After the shoot-ing, our village was surrounded from all sides by Germans and civilians,emerging from the forest, all of whom were armed with machine gunsand rifles. They entered the village and began to gather the entire villagepopulation on the square in front of the church. After gathering the men,women, old people and children, the Germans and the civilians drovethem into groups of 20–30, chased them into barns, closed the buildingsand burned the buildings together with the people inside. Those who

83 Antoni B. Szczesniak and Wieslaw Z. Szota, Droga do nikad: działnosc organizacji ukrainskichnacjonalistów i jej likwidacja w Polsce, Warsaw: Wyd-wo Ministerstwa Oborony Narodowej 1973, p. 127.A copy of this report can be found in the Huta Pieniacka Case files at the Cracow Regional Office of thePolish Main Commission for the Investigation of Crimes against the Polish Nation.

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tried to run were killed. In this way 600–700 people were killed andburned, all livestock was taken away, as was footwear and clothes.”

The Huta Pieniacka resident explains: ‘On 28 February 1944 our villagecame under fire, and soon after the shooting ended the SS’ troops andGermans arrived, including many men in civilian clothes on horse carts.The SS men were Ukrainians, they entered all the houses and gathered allthe old people, children and youth on the square in front of the church,chased part of the people into the church, and thereafter some sort ofKommendant of the SS men—he spoke Ukrainian—took the old peopleand the children and in groups sent them into the barn, locked them upand burned the people together with the barn.

I was in the church and was afraid to leave, and an SS man calledme out of the church. They gathered us in groups, there were children,old people and women among us, and about 40–50 people marchedus into one of the barns, and in it people screamed with inhumanvoices—at this point we realized, that they will burn us alive. The peo-ple began to run, and the SS men opened fire on them with machineguns. I fell between two rocks and remained alive. Then they gath-ered us who were still alive and forced us back into the barn, closedthe doors and put it on fire. When the barn was burning I broke twoplanks and ran out of the fire, into the forest. The rest were all burnedalive.84

The Huta Pieniacka operation also included UPA men, who wantedto ‘settle the scores with the population, since they were helping the RedPartisans.’ They were given rifles and 15 bullets each, and helped in theextermination of the villagers.

The participants from the UPA bands, who at that time had arrived inthe village . . . together with the commander of the Volhynian band alsosurrounded the village and did that, what the Germans did, that is burnedhouses and various buildings, and drove the residents into the RomanCatholic Church. Those who tried to hide were shot on the spot, andshots were fired at those running. After that, as the ring that encircledthe village was dissolved and the operation came to an end, the residentswere being convoyed to the barn and the houses, locked up, and burned.There were four or five barns, filled with the residents of Huta Pieniacka,about 700–750 people, all of whom were burned. The above mentioned

84 “Vypiska iz ag[enturnogo] dela No. 40, ‘Zveri,’ arkh. No. 2387, str. 26, 50, 55, 56, 112, HDASBU, f. 26, op. 2, spr. 2, ark. 208–211, printed in Pol’shcha ta Ukraina u tridtsiatykh-sorokovychrokakh XX stolittia. Nevidomi dokumenty z arkhiviv spetsial’nykh sluzhb. Tom 4. Poliaki i ukraintsi mizhdvoma totalitarnymy systemamy 1942–1945. Chastyna druha., Warsaw and Kyiv: Derzhavnyi arkhivSluzhbi bezpeky Ukrainy, Arkhiv Ministerstva vnutrennykh sprav i administratsii Respubliki Pol’shcha.Institut natsional’noi pam’’iati—Komisia z peresliduvannia zlochyniv proty pols’koho narodu. Instytutpolitychnykh i ethnonatsional’nykh doslidzhen’ Natsional’noi akademii nauk Ukrainy, 2005, pp. 976–981.

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pogrom continued from eight in the morning until two or three in theafternoon.85

In the interest of accuracy I have chosen to include the original quota-tions cited above. This is important, as the Ukrainian Waffen-SS veteransand their admirers deny the unit’s involvement in the massacre. EvhenPobihushchyi claims Huta Pieniacka burned down as a result of fighting.

[T]he Poles met the advancing group in Huta Pieniacka with machinegun fire and stubbornly defended the village. The Catholic Church andvarious buildings were burned, but neither our soldiers, nor the Germansburned people alive in the houses, nor did they carry out mass shootings.Of course the civilians suffered losses. This was inevitable.86

Taras Hunchak denies the involvement of Waffen-SS Galizien troops inthe Huta Pieniacka massacre, blaming an unknown unit.

That operation of the fourth regiment has, to some extent become adispute, because Polish authors incorrectly attribute the destruction ofHuta Pieniacka and the losses of Polish patriots to the Ukrainian sub-detachment which captured the village, and not the German specialdetachment, which in reality conducted this war crime.87

Evhen Pobihushchyi does not provide any sources for his claim. TarasHunchak, Andrii Bolianovs’kyi, and Roman Kolisnyk, editor of the UkrainianWaffen-SS veterans’ journal Visti Kombatanta, all rely on one single source,a report from the military board member Mykhailo Khronoviat, who hadtravelled from L’viv to spend time with the regiment, which at the timewas training near Zolochiv.88 Whereas the report’s record of the massacre islargely consistent with other testimonies, it differs from all other accountsin that it places the blame for the massacre on an unspecified GermanSchutzpolizei unit.89

85 “Vypiska iz ag[enturnogo] dela No. 40, ‘Zveri,’ in Pol’shcha ta Ukraina, Tom 4, pp. 976–981. TheWaffen-SS Galizien’s cooperation with the UPA at the time of the Huta Pieniacka massacre is also con-firmed by the ‘Protokol Viis’kovoi uprav 7 bereznia 1944 r.’ and ‘Khronika Dyvizii “Halychyna”’ z 25 liutnia1944 r. – Mykh. Ostroverkhy TsDAVOV Ukrainy, f. 3971, op. 1, Spr. 7, ark. 43.86 Evhen Pobihushchyi-Ren, Mozaika moikh spomyniv, Ivano-Frankivs’k: Vydavnytstvo ‘Lileia NV,’2002, pp. 134–135.87 Taras Hunchak, U mundyrakh voroha, Brody: Prosvita, 2005, p. 154.88 Bolianovs’kyi, Dyviziia ‘Halychyna,’ p. 218; Taras Hunczak, On the Horns of a Dilemma: The Storyof the Ukrainian Division Halychyna, Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2000, p. 72.89 M. J. Melnyk, To Battle, pp. 102–103, citing Gal. SS Freiw. Regt. 4, O.U., den 3.3.1944, RegimentsTagesbefehl No. 10. AA and ‘Minutes of the Military Board,’ op. cit., 7 March 1944, pp. 91–92.

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On February 28, a second action (Einsatz) in Huta Pienacka. (Duringthe first Einsatz, two soldiers were killed . . . Cap. M. Khronoviat talksabout an action (vyprava) against Huta Pieniacka, in which he partic-ipated in German uniform. They started from Koniushkiv and arrivedin Zharkiv at 2 AM on 28 February 1944. Zharkiv is the last villagebefore Huta Pieniacka. Our attack began early, at 6 AM: the front unithad 40 people. The soldiers moved ahead, and fought well. After onehour of fighting they entered the village and stayed there until 11. As weretreated from the village, we brought out the two killed soldiers—[killed]on February 23—who were naked and butchered. The Mazury [the Poles]of Huta Pieniacka are infamous: they humiliated Ukrainians, they werekilling our peasants, and torn the jaw off one of our priests. The entirepopulation fled to the [Roman Catholic] church. The village was set onfire. Every house was a storehouse of ammunition—there was a terriblenoise as the grenades exploded. By the way, Jews were also hiding inthe village. . . . There Cap. Khronoviat visited the sixth company, locatedin Pidkamin’. Here our soldiers under the regiment of our SS officerscould finally have a chance to have a rest. They could finally stay in theirhouses, since before the arrival there of our SS men, via Huta Pieniacka—which, after the retreat of our SS a special German unit had completelypacified so that only the church remained. . . . . Detailed informationabout the first of our SS’s presence on February 23 and 24 in the vil-lage of Huta Pieniacka, in which the Poles were fortified. In this battleOleksa Bobak, Roman Andriichuk, and Yurko Hanusiak were killed. Thefirst battalion of the 4th regiment took part in the battle. . . . 8 to 12 ofour SS were injured. The village of Huta Pieniacka and Pieniaki wereburned and pacified, depopulated. This operation was carried out by aspecial German unit, and not our volunteers. Remarking on this battle:our men entered Huta Pieniacka on the 23 of February and came underfire which killed two of our soldiers and we started to retreat from thevillage. And the Poles were attacking. At that moment the Poles cameunder fire from the flank. It is assumed that this fire came from Ukrainianpartisans.90

This claim is implausible—not only is it based upon a single source, buton a biased one at that, since the Military Board representative had lit-tle interest in portraying the dark side of a police operation implicatingthose who were meant to formally join a ‘military’ division. Furthermore,this claim is contradicted by a report of the Ukrainian Aid Committee, subor-dinated to Volodymyr Kubijovyc’s Ukrainian Central Committee in Krakow.It states, unambiguously, that the ‘pacification’ of the village was conducted

90 ‘Protokol Viis’kovoi uprav 7 bereznia 1944 r.’ and ‘Khronika Dyvizii “Halychyna”’ z 25 liutnia1944 r.- Mykh. Ostroverkhy TsDAVOV Ukrainy, f. 3971, op. 1, Spr. 7, ark. 43, also reprinted in RomanKolisnyk, ‘4-i halyts’kyi dobrovol’chyi polk i Huta Pieniats’ka’ 19 October 2008; Visti Kombatanta2, (2008),http://komb-a-ingwar.blogspot.com/search/label/2008%20�%202 (accessed 17 June 2011).

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by soldiers affiliated with Waffen-SS Galizien in retaliation for the death oftwo of their comrades at the outskirts of the village.

On 29 February 1944 [sic] units of the SS-Division Galizien were search-ing the forests in the vicinity of the Polish village Huta Pieniacka, afavorite ground of Bolshevik parachutists. As the SS advance guardapproached the village, they unexpectedly came under heavy rifle fire,killing two SS men and seriously wounded a third one. In response theSS unit encircled the village and conducted a pacification.91

OTHER ATROCITIES IN EASTERN GALICIA

The same report mentions another Aktionen. In retaliation for the killing of15 Ukrainians in the village of Zhukiv in the Zolochiv district by Polish par-tisans, on 4 March 1944, ‘an armed detachment of the German gendarmerieand parts of SS men from the Division Galizien from Zolochiv conducteda pacification’ of the Polish village of Vitsyn’, allegedly a partisan base.92 Itappears to have been part of a series of assaults on Polish villages. FatherWacław Sztelnicki reported on a joint attack on the Dominican Monastery onMarch 4:

The attacks on Polish villages grew more frequent and more intensethe closer the Red Army approached. . . . On Sunday, 4 March 1944, acombined UPA and SS Volunteer Division rounded up some 2,000 peoplewho were hiding in the Dominican Monastery in the Podkamien parish ofBrody. Fr. Stanislaw Fialkowski and three Dominican priests were mur-dered. Altogether they killed 600 people in the villages of Palikrowy,Malinska, and Czernicy.93

In the massacre of Poles who had sought shelter in the Podkamienmonastery, the 4th Police Regiment of the Waffen-SS Galizien cooperated

91 The Michael Chomiak collection in the Provincial Archives of Alberta (PAA), Edmonton, accessionno. 85.191, folder 59, sheet 358. The item ‘Pacification of the village Huta Pieniacka in Brody area’ is listedas item 55/3. This report lists a number of other massacres in Galicia, Pidliashshia, and Kholmshchyna,committed between 25 February and 7 March 1944. It is accompanied by a 3 March protocol fromthe board of directors of the Ukrainian Central Committee, listing 18 names, the first of which beingDr. Pankivs’kyi. See also Oleksandr Melnyk, review of Michael James Melnyk. p. 109.92 ‘On the night of February 3, armed people attacked a hamlet of Zhukiv in the Skazhenyts admin-istrative district of the Zolochiv area, burned eight Ukrainian farmsteads and killed about 15 Ukrainians.The aggressors departed in the direction of the Polish village of Vitsyn’. The following day a heavilyarmed (syl’nyi) detachment of German gendarmerie and parts of the SS men of the Division Galizienfrom Zolochiv conducted a pacification of the above-mentioned Polish village.’ The Michael Chomiakcollection, PAA, accession no. 85.191, folder 59, sheet 358, item 56/3.93 Fr. Wacław Sztelnicki, Zapomniany lwowski bohater ks. Stanisław Frankl; z przedmowa IgnacegoTokarczuka, Rome: n.p. 1983, p. 132; Tadeusz Piotrowski, Poland’s Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaborationwith Occupying Forces and Genocide in the Second Republic, 1918–1947, Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1998,p. 230.

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with a UPA unit led by Maks Skurups’kyi, nom-du-guerre ‘Maks.’94 GrzegorzMotyka writes that about 100 Poles were murdered in the monastery, inaddition to the people killed in the village,95 Ihor Iliushyn how soldiersof Waffen-SS Galizien murdered over 250 Poles in the local Dominicanmonastery.

A part of the Ukrainian detachment climbed over the walls and began tomurder those who had not managed to escape, other detachments spreadout over the village and went to the houses of the Poles, demandingAusweise (identity cards). People with Polish nationality marked in theirAusweis were killed. As those who managed to escape the assault couldtestify, those who could demonstrate they were not Poles were spared.96

Also the 12 March 1944 destruction of the nearby Polish village ofPalikrowy (Ukr: Palykorovy) was carried out by the 4th Police Regiment ofthe Waffen-SS Galizien in cooperation with UPA detachments.97 Accordingto Ukrainian sources, 385 Poles were executed.98

Evidence of the destruction of other Polish villages is found in theMykola Lebed Papers, which Volodymyr V’’iatrovych cites to the effect thatthe Germans repeatedly used Waffen-SS Galizien in punitive operationsagainst the Polish minority in Galicia.

On 4 March (6 or March), 1944 the Ukrainian SS-men destroyed the Polishcolony Zavone, a fortified headquarter of Polish-Bolshevik bands. In theAktion about 300 people were killed, and the village burned down. In thevillage many weapons and ammunition were found.99

V’’iatrovych also cites Polish reports from April 1944 on how soldiers ofthe Waffen-SS Galizien burned the village of Iasenytsia Pol’ska in the Polishdistrict of Kamionka Strumiłowa (Ukr. Kam’’ianka Strumylova),100 and how,

94 Grzegorz Motyka, Ukrainska partyzantka 1942–1960: Działalnosc Organizacji UkrainskichNacjonalistów i Ukrainskiej Powstanczej Armii, Warsaw: Instytut Studiów Politycznych PAN, OficynaWydawnicza RYTM, Warszawa 2006, pp. 385–386; Grzegorz Motyka, ‘Niemcy a UPA,’ Karta 23,(1997) pp. 62–63.95 Motyka, Ukrainska partyzantka, 385.96 Ihor Iljuszyn, UPA i AK: konflikt w Zachodniej Ukrainie (1939–1945), Warsaw: Zwiazek Ukraincóww Polsce, 2009, pp. 162–163, citing Archiwum Akt Nowych AAN, sygn. 202/II/73. Zespół akt DelegaturyRzadu RP na Kraj. Departament Spraw Wewnetrznych. Biuro Wschodnie. Raport o tragedii w Podkamieniuz marca 1944, k. 75–77.97 Motyka, Ukrainska partyzantka, 385.98 P. T. Tron’ko et al. (eds.). Istoriia gorodov i sel Ukrainskoi SSR (L’vovskaia oblast’), Kyiv: Institutistorii Akademii Nauk USSR, Gl. red. Ukr. Sov. Entsikl. AN USSR, 1978), pp. 192–193.99 V’’iatrovych, Druha pol’sko-ukrains’ka viina, 165, citing ATsDVR, f. 9, t. 6, Od. Zb. 4, Ark. 43.100 V’’iatrovych, Druha pol’sko-ukains’ka viina, 165, citing Ziemie Wschodnie: Meldunki tygdnioweSekciji Wscodnej Departmentu Informaciji i Prasy Delegatury Rzadu RP na Kraj. Kwicien-lipiec 1944,Warsaw: Oficyna Wydawnicza ‘Aspra-JR,’ 2006, p. 27.

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In Eastern Galicia [Malopolska Wschodnia] the arrival of the SS divisionraises the dangerous prospect of a new wave of murders. The attitude ofthe division does not leave any doubts about that. There the locals seethe possibility of rescue in the quick Soviet advance.101

During the second half of April 1944, units linked to Waffen-SS Galizienburned the Polish village Budki Nieznanowskie in the district KamionkaStrumiłowa (Ukr. Kam’’ianka Strumylova) and the village Pawłów in theRadziechowsk district.102 Grzegorz Motyka describes how on 7 April 1944,a subdivision of Waffen-SS Galizien ‘or deserters from the unit’ murdered22 persons in the village of Chatki in the Podhajce [Ukr: Pidhaitsy] district.103

Reports to the Higher SS and Police Leadership indicate involvementof the 5th Regiment of the Waffen-SS Galizien division in violent ‘pacifica-tion’ operations. On 13 April 1944, it captured six partisans in the village ofZabuce. ‘Thirty-five partisans and partisan helpers shot while fleeing or offer-ing violent resistance. In 16 houses hand-grenades exploded and incendiaryammunition was used. Village 80 percent razed [by fire].’104 On 17 May 1944,Armia Krajowa reported to the Polish exile government in London that ‘unitsof the SS Halychyna Division appeared recently in the county of Hrubieszowwhere they stepped up terrorist attacks on the civilian population. Six Polishvillages were burned down.’105

In addition to the issue of the burning of villages, the unit’s involvementin anti-Jewish actions remains an open question. Dieter Pohl, in his detailedstudy on the Holocaust in Galicia, concludes that there is a ‘high probability’that soldiers from the Waffen-SS Galizien took part in the round-up of Jewsin Brody in February 1944.106

ROUTING AT BRODY, COUNTERINSURGENCY ACTIVITIESIN SLOVAKIA AND SLOVENIA

The 16–22 July 1944 battle of Brody was a defining moment in the division’shistory, and the unit’s most significant military engagement. In battle with

101 V’’iatrovych, Druha pol’sko-ukains’ka viina, 165, citing M. Syvits’kyi, Istoriia pol’sko-ukrains’kykhkonfliktiv u 3 t., T. 2, Kyiv, 2005, p. 238.102 Iljuszyn, UPA i AK , p. 158.103 Motyka, Ukrainska partyzantka, p. 386.104 M. J. Melnyk, To Battle, p. 104, citing Fernschreiben, + kdr LbL nr 298/5/1530, an den höheren SS-und pol. Führer ost—Führungsstab. roem. Eins a—Crocow, Betr. roem. eins a Banden Meldung. geheim.AA.105 Halina Czarnocka, Armia Krajowa w Dokumentach 1939–1945, T. 3: kwiecien 1943–1944,Volume 3, London: Studium Polski Podziemnej, 1976, p. 447.106 Dieter Pohl, Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien 1941–1944: Organisation undDurchführung eines staatlichen Massenverbrechens, Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1997, p. 365.

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the Red Army, the unit was routed and suffered heavy losses.107 Of the11,000 soldiers deployed at Brody, 7,400 were listed as ‘missing in action.’The 3,000 soldiers who were able to be re-deployed, were joined by othervolunteers and reorganized in Neuhammer, Silesia.

The battle of Brody took place roughly halfway through the unit’s two-year existence, less than 11 months after the volunteers had been sworn in.The division continued it existence for another ten months until its surrenderon 10 May 1945. From August 1944 the unit was stationed in Slovakia, whereit was involved in counter-insurgency operations. It took part in the crushingof the Slovak National Uprising in concert with some of the most brutalSS counterinsurgency units, such as the 18th SS Volunteer Panzer GrenadierDivision Horst Wessel, the SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger, the Vlasov detach-ment and other SS and SD formations until 5 February 1945.108 The SlovakNational Uprising was a broad, anti-fascist insurgency, aimed at the Germansand its powerless clericofascist puppet regime.109

Unfortunately, the documentation of the unit’s activities in Slovakia issketchy and inconclusive. Howard Margolian finds that ‘In view of the bru-tality with which the Germans suppressed the Slovak National Uprising in theautumn of 1944, it is possible that elements of the division were implicatedin crimes against civilians during its tour of duty in Slovakia,’110 yet, ‘[o]nlyfragments of the contemporary documentation on the 14th SS’s operationsin Slovakia survived the war. What little is known about the division’s assis-tance in the suppression of the Slovak National Uprising comes from postwartrials held before the National Tribune and various people’s courts.’111 Onlyin the past few years has the role of the Waffen-SS Galizien in the crushingof the Slovak uprising been subject to serious inquiry.112 Jan Stanislav, theDirector of the Museum of the Slovak National Uprising in Banska Bystricafinds that ‘the 14th SS Division Galizien with its delegated units’ took part inpacification operations during the Slovak uprising.

107 The perhaps most detailed and well-researched account of the battle of Brody is M. J. Melnyk’sTo Battle! and Bolianovs’kyi, Dyviziia ‘Halychyna’: istoriia, pp. 224–254.108 Bolianovs’kyi, Dyviziia ‘Halychyna,’ p. 274.109 Barbara Lášticová and Andrej Findor, ‘Politics of Memory and Identity: How (not) to StudyMuseum Exhibitions,’ p. 3. Paper presented at World War II and the (Re)Creation of Historical Memory inContemporary Ukraine. An international conference, 23–26 September 2009, Kyiv, Ukraine.110 Margolian, Unauthorized Entry, p. 134.111 Margolian, Unauthorized Entry, p. 297.112 Karol Fremal, ‘14. Waffen-Grenadier Division der SS (Galizien Nr. 1) v historickej spisbe o sloven-skom hnutí odporu v rokoch druhej svetovej vojny,’ in Michal Šmigel and Peter Micko (eds.), Slovenskárepublika 1939–1945 ocami mladých historikov. Zv. 4., Banská Bystrica Katedra histórie FHV UMB aÚstav vedy a výskumu UMB, 2005, pp. 388–399; Michal Šmigel, 14. Divízia SS ‘Galizien’ na Slovensku(1944–1945) bojová protipartizánska cinost’ a represálie, in Peter Sokolovic (ed.), ‘Slovenská republika1939–1945 ocami mladých historikov. Zv. 7. Perezekúcie na Slovensku v rokach 1938–1945’, Bratislava:Ústav pamati národa 2008, pp. 212–233.

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In the Smerycany area and in Nizna Boca/Maluzina it specifically attackedthe civilian population. In Smercany, the Wittenmeyer unit from theDivision burned the village down using artillery and mortar fire. Thecivilian population was driven out of the village and 80 percent of the120 houses were burned down. Four people died. During the raid onNizna Boca, five people died. These are just the most telling examples ofwhen this unit struck.113

Jan Korcek at the Slovak Military Historical Institute in Bratislava lists indetail nine separate incidents in which the Waffen-SS Galizien took part inatrocities against the Slovak population.114 The Waffen-SS Galizien veterans’own claims that they got along well with the local Slovak population areclearly contradicted in the German correspondence, which state that ‘muchis currently being said amongst the Slovak population about the Ukrainiansoldiers now stationed in Slovakia. It can be taken from these discussionsthat these soldiers are generally not much liked.’115 German documentationshows that the local Slovak population feared and hated the UkrainianWaffen-SS men, noting that the population ‘complains about other foreignunits based in the Eastern part of Slovakia, in particular those of Ukrainiannationality’116 and that ‘No Slovak has any confidence whatsoever in theseUkrainians.’117

Expelled from Slovakia, the division continued fighting anti-Nazi par-tisans in Slovenia from January 1945 until the end of the war.118 Aroundthis time, Waffen-SS Galizien was joined by a number of former auxiliarypolice formations, including the bulk of the Schutzmannschaft Battalion 31,also known as the Volhynian Legion.119 According to University of Ottawapolitical scientist Ivan Katchanovski, this battalion

under its various names is implicated by different sources in mass execu-tions of Ukrainians, Jews, and Poles in the Volyn Region and in Polandunder a pretext of anti-partisan actions. For example, analysis of eyewit-ness testimonies, interviews with local residents, archival documents, andthe fact of an urgent redeployment of this unit from the Kremenets area

113 Julian Hendy, ‘SS in Britain, Nizna Boca,’ October 2001. p. 4, citing interview with Dr. Jan Stanislav,Director of the Museum of the Slovak National Uprising, Banska Bystrica, 4 December 1998.114 Julian Hendy, ‘SS in Britain, Submission to the Independent Television Commission,’ YorkshireTelevision, April 2000, p. 12.115 Veryha, Pid krylamy, 136. For the German reports, see BA- R 70, SL Nr. 170, p. 46, Chief ofEinsatzgruppe H, Neusohl 14.12.1944, cited by Hendy, ‘SS in Britain, Nizna Boca,’ p. 11.116 BA- R 70 SL Nr 175, pp. 3–9, Einsatzkommando of the SIPO und SD, SD Report Presov 01.11.1944,cited in Hendy, ‘SS in Britain, Nizna Boca,’ p. 11.117 BA- R 70 SL Nr 170- p. 24, Handwritten report (Sipo und SD) Sillein (=ZIlina) 28.10.1944, inHendy, ‘SS in Britain, Nizna Boca,’ p. 11.118 O. Melnyk, Review of M. J. Melnyk, p. 109.119 Bolianovs’kyi, Ukrains’kyi viiskovi forumvannia, pp. 266, 301.

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to the village of Pidhaitsi near Lutsk a day before a massacre there, indi-cate its likely involvement in the mass murder of 20 Ukrainian residentsof Pidhaitsi, half of whom were children, under a pretext of a retaliationfor the killing of a German soldier. The same sources show that this unitwas responsible for an execution of more than 100 prisoners from theLutsk prison on the old ground of the Pidhaitsi School in the vicinity ofLutsk in January of 1944.120

WAFFEN -SS GALIZIEN OR UKRAINIAN NATIONAL ARMY?

As Nazi Germany was collapsing, Alfred Rosenberg, in the name of theGerman government recognized Pavlo Shandruk as head of the UkrainianNational Committee on 12 March 1945. Three days later Andrii Livits’kyi rec-ognized Shandruk’s forces, under the name the Ukrainian National Army,as the armed forces of the Ukrainian People’s Republic in exile. On paper,during its last days of existence the Waffen-SS Galizien formally stood underthe command of the successors of Petliura’s army.121 Whereas the Waffen-SS Galizien was reorganized as the First Division of the Ukrainian NationalArmy on 25 April, the soldiers and even NCOs only learned about this fromthe division’s newspaper Do Boiu!/Zum Kampf!, during the very last days ofthe war.122 On 28 April 1945, nine days before the surrender of the division tothe British and Americans in Austria,123 the division’s journal Do Boiu!/ZumKampf! still carried the SS symbol, the Siegrunen, and the subtitle Ukrains’kyivoiats’kyi chasopys Hren. Dyvizii zbroi SS [Ukrainian military journal of theGrenadier Division of the Waffen-SS] in its letterhead. It carried a large tributeto SS-Brigadenführer Fritz Freitag on his 51st birthday and an article aboutthe struggle of the German capital and enthusiastic accounts about how‘the forces of Bandera’ and the UPA fought the Judeocommunist intruders(zhydo-bol’shevyts’kykh naiznykiv)124 (Figure 5). Under the headline ‘Jewishpunitive expeditions’ we read how

120 Ivan Katchanovski, ‘The OUN, the UPA, and the Nazi-led Genocide in Ukraine’ Paper presented atthe 15th Annual World Conference of the Association for the Study of Nationalities at Columbia University,New York, 15–17 April 2010, pp. 27–28.121 Aleksandr Gogun, Mezhdu Gitlerom i Stalinom: Ukrainskie povstantsy, St. Petersburg: Neva, 2004,Chapter 1, ‘Usloviia vozniknoveniia i funktsionirovaniia UPA. Problema ukrainskogo kollaboratsionizma,’http://lib.oun–upa.org.ua/gogun/dis_r01.html (accessed 25 May 2011).122 Veryha, Pid krylamy vyzvol’nykh dum, p. 160.123 Grzegorz Motyka, ‘Słowianscy wojownicy Hitlera,’ Tygodnyk ‘Wprost,’ Nr. 946 (14 stycznia 2001)http://www.wprost.pl/ar/?O=8971&C=57 (accessed 4 April 2011).124 ‘Z Ukrainy: Vyzvol’na borot’ba,’ Do Boiu! ‘Zum Kampf!’: Ukrains’kyi voiats’kyi chasopys Ukrains’kyivoiats’kyi chasopys Hren. Dyvizii zbroi SS, 28 April 1945, Year 1, volume 2, p. 2. Bandera had beenreleased from German captivity in October 1944, following which he resumed his collaboration withNazi Germany. Rossolinski–Liebe, ‘Celebrating Fascism,’ 3, citing FSB (Federal’na Sluzhna Bezopasnosti),Moscow, N–19092/T. 100, l. 233 (Stepan Bandera’s prison card).

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FIGURE 5 From the front page of Do Boiu!/zum Kampf!: Ukrains’kyi voiats’kyi chasopysHren. Dyvizii zbroi SS for April 28, 1945. Note the Siegrunen, the symbol of the SS, in theletterhead.

In Ukraine, punitive expeditions are carried out by regiments, consistingexclusively of Jews. The purpose of these regiments is to punish residentsof Ukrainian cities and villages for their desire to take part in mass shoot-ings of Jews. The Jews do their best to plunder to bring the Ukrainianpopulation into extreme poverty and death by starvation.125

The division faithfully served Adolf Hitler, the unit’s journal dispersed anti-Semitic propaganda until the very last days of the war. After its surrender toBritish and US forces on May 10, the members of the division were internedat a camp in Rimini, Italy.

WAFFEN -SS GALIZIEN VETERANS IN CANADA

The Ukrainian Canadian Committee conducted an aggressive campaign toadmit the Waffen-SS Galizien veterans into Canada. ‘Aware that Ottawa’smain objection to the division was the apparently voluntary character of itsrecruitment, those lobbying on its behalf changed their tactics. Henceforth,no effort would be spared in advancing the claim that the rank and file ofthe 14th SS had been “forcibly conscripted,” ’126 Howard Margolian writes.Other Waffen-SS veterans were admitted by claiming that they had beencivilians. The Central Ukrainian Relief Agency, headed by Gordon Panchuk,

125 ‘Z Ukrainy: Zhydivs’ki karni ekspedytsii,’ Do Boiu! ‘Zum Kampf!’: Ukrains’kyi voiats’kyi chasopysHren. Dyvizii zbroi SS, 28 April 1945, Year 1, volume 2, p. 2. John–Paul Himka notes that the ultimatesource of the claim of Jewish liquidation commandos is most likely a speech held by Joseph Goebbels inthe Berlin Sportpalast on 18 February 1943.126 Margolian, Unauthorized Entry, p. 140.

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a Canadian flight lieutenant stationed in London led the efforts to bring theUkrainian Waffen-SS men to Canada. ‘If applications are made now withoutany mention of the fact that they were previously confined as PWs’ [Panchuk]advised a representative of the Ukrainian-Canadian lobby, ‘no questions areasked.’127 ‘There is no way of determining how many former members of the14th SS evaded detection in this manner,’ writes Howard Margolian.128 In theend, between 1,200 and 2,000 of the Waffen-SS Galizien veterans immigratedto Canada.129

Whereas the re-naming and re-organization of the division was a cos-metic change in the last days of the war, it is heavily emphasized in thememory and myth-making of the veterans and their admirers. In Canada theveterans, organized as ‘The Brotherhood of former soldiers of the 1st Div. ofthe Ukrainian National Army’ (Bratstvo kol. voiakiv 1-oi Ukrains’koi DyviziiUNA) became a constituent member of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, alobby group, claiming to speak on behalf of over 1.2 million Canadians ofUkrainian descent.

The Canadian Jewish Congress strongly objected to the admission ofveterans of the Waffen-SS Galizien to Canada. The issue was surroundedby political controversy, particularly given Canada’s reluctance to provideJewish refugees with a sanctuary during the Holocaust.130 The Canadianauthorities relied on the background screening of the veterans carried outby the British. While the British officials tasked with the screening of thebackground of the division estimated that it would take months to screenthe Waffen-SS Galizien veterans, they were given less than a month to com-plete this task. The result was that only a fraction of the 8,272 men internedat Rimini were examined.

Haldane Porter, who investigated the Waffen-SS Galizien veterans forthe Special Refugee Commission of the British government was deeplyskeptical about the historical account of the division, which, he noted hadbeen put together ‘entirely by the Ukrainians themselves.’131 Alti Rodal, theDeschênes’ Commission’s Director of Historical Research, who studied thescreening process in detail, found that ‘Because of the large number of per-sons involved, the British officials in 1947 decided that individual screeningwas impossible and that only a cross-section would be questioned.’132 Shefound that the security screening by the British authorities, following thesurrender of the unit, was incomplete.

127 Margolian, Unauthorized Entry, p. 141.128 Margolian, Unauthorized Entry, p. 141.129 Margolian, Unauthorized Entry, p. 132.130 Margolian, Unauthorized Entry, pp. 144–145. On the Canadian immigration policy towards Jews,see Irving Abella and Harold Troper, None Is too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933–1948,Toronto: Lester and Orpen Dennys, 1982.131 Margolian, Unauthorized Entry, pp. 136–137.132 Alti Rodal, ‘The Ukrainian “Halychyna” ’ (Galizien) Waffen-SS Division,’ Chapter XII, part 3, p. 12.

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Assurances from the British Foreign Office in 1950 notwithstanding,screening of the group by British officials was at best sketchy . . . [TheCanadian] government . . . withdrew from further screening as soon asit was regarded politic to do so—in keeping with overall governmentpolicy that minimized the importance of security screening for Nazicollaborators.133

After having relied on the inadequate British screening the Canadianauthorities soon cancelled their own screening of the former SS men.

[T]here was little substance and little motivation in Canadian securityscreening procedures for Nazi collaborators in the early 1950s. By June1953, Immigration Branch issued instructions to cancel the January1951 Directive regarding the processing of Ukrainians in the U.K. becauseit was ‘obsolete.’ Presumably, this entailed cancellation of any securitychecks on persons in this category.134

When the Deschênes Commission revisited this episode in 1986, again,only a small fraction of the veterans of the Waffen-SS Galizien had theirbackground checked:

The BDC checks undertaken by the RCMP and the DeschênesCommission were limited to the 218 officers of the Division named byWiesenthal, and, indeed, association with police and other SS formationsin the 1940 to 1943 period has been established for only 12 of theseofficers. Other than for these officers, no checks have been made onDivision members admitted to Canada. Even from this limited sample,it is clear that there was continuity between the 1941–1943 Ukrainianpolice/military formations and the Division.135

Based on Deschênes Commission case files, Rodal established that a numberof those alleged to have served with various police units, which may havebeen linked to atrocities, later became members of the Waffen-SS Galizien:

Also, a number trained for police work in 1940 or served in the AuxiliaryPolice or other police and SS formations from 1941 to 1943—two (sub-jects Q and S) trained in the SS and Police School in Zakopane in 1940;one (subject B) transferred in late 1942 from Nachtigall to engage inpolice work until November 1943; another (subject X) held the rank ofHauptmann with the Auxiliary Police in Kiev from July 1941 to June1943; one (subject Z) also served within the Police from July 1941 to

133 Rodal, ‘The Ukrainian,’ p. 26.134 Rodal, ‘The Ukrainian,’ p. 25.135 Rodal, ‘The Ukrainian,’ p. 10.

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June 1943 (both subjects X and Z attained the rank of Hauptsturmführerin the Division); one (subject R) served with the Hilfspolizei; another(subject C) served as District Adjutant of the Ukrainian Auxiliary Policein Kolomya in 1941.136

Rodal concludes that ‘At least some persons who served with the Nazi-sponsored Ukrainian police/militia units that participated in killing actionsin 1941–1943 would have found their way into the ranks of the Divisionpossibly before, and more likely after the Battle of Brody.’137 The Canadiangovernment, however, decided not to make Rodal’s report public. It wasonly released, in a highly censored version, in August 1987, in response toseveral Access to Information requests. In the 1990s, some other sectionswere released. Rodal’s report concurs with Haldane Porter’s report regardingthe inadequacy of British screening of the Division members:

The men may be all or in part lying and even their names may be false.No attempt at cross-examination was made except where some obscurityor glaring discrepancy was revealed during the course of the interroga-tion, the work in fact which the screeners have done has largely consistedof taking down through an interpreter the men’s answers to a limitednumber of set questions.138

THE VETERANS DURING THE COLD WAR

The outlooks of former SS men of the division developed in different direc-tions. Many remained unreformed totalitarians, who hoped for a new 1941,some even training soldiers for a World War III.139 Pobihushchyi continuedhis fascist political activities for the rest of his long life.140 As regional leaderof the OUN(b) in Baden-Württemberg and military advisor of the centralOUN(b) Provid, he organized a military training camp in the forests out-side Regensburg in August–September 1948 where about 40 OUN NCOs

136 Rodal, ‘The Ukrainian,’ p. 9.137 Rodal, ‘The Ukrainian,’ p. 33.138 D. Haldane Porter, ‘Refugee Screening Commission Report on Ukrainians in Surrendered EnemyPersonnel (sep) Camp No. 374 Italy,’ 21 February 1947, Public Archives of Canada, Ottawa, Citizenshipand Immigration Branch, RG 26, vol. 147, file 3-43-1 (copy). Also cited in Yury Boshyk, Ukraine dur-ing World War II: History and Its Aftermath, Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at theUniversity of Alberta, 1986, p. 237.139 Lubomyr Luciuk, Searching for Place: Ukrainian Displaced Persons, Canada, and the Migrationof Memory, Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 2001, pp. 218, 233, 261.140 See, for instance ‘Fiftieth Anniversary of Rumanian Legionary Movement’ ABN Correspondence:Bulletin of the Antibolshevik Bloc of Nations XXVIII(4) (July–August 1977) p. 44.

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were educated.141 The OUN(b) maintained contact with Francisco Francoand negotiated for an arrangement to accept former UPA and Waffen-SSGalizien soldiers into Spanish military academies.142 A center of formerWaffen SS-Galizien veterans in London sought to establish a military dic-tatorship in Ukraine.143 Others professed themselves to be democrats after1945, making careers in politics and academia. In contact with majoritysociety the veterns generally omitted their background in the Waffen-SS.Within their community, however, it was regarded as merit. Among the moreprominent alumni were Volodymyr Kubijovyc, who after the war came toedit the Encyclopedia of Ukraine,144 (Figure 6). University of Alberta chan-cellor Petro Savaryn,145 philologist Oleksa Horbatsch at the University ofFrankfurt,146 Wasyl Veryha, chronicler of the Division, co-editor of the vet-eran’s journal Visti Kombantanta and director of the Slavic collection at

141 Briefing by Deputy Director of the MGB of the Ukrainian SSR, Col. Shorubalka to Ukrainian SSRminister of State Security Nikolai Koval’chuk, 1 November 1951. HDA SBU, f. 13, Spr. 372, t. 43, ark.19, 22.142 ‘Protokol doprosa Matvienko, Mirona Vasil’evicha’ 14–15 July 1951, HDA SBU, f. 6, spr. 56232,ark. 96.143 ‘Protokol doprosa arestovannogo KUKA Vasiliia Stepanovicha,’ 28 May 1954, HDA SBU, f. 6, Spr.51895 fp., t. 1, Ark. 71.144 Kubijovyc’s Encyclopedia of Ukraine was published by The Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studiesat the University of Alberta, which also administers the Volodymyr and Daria Kubijovyc MemorialEndowment Fund, established in 1 November 1986. Its current value stands at CAD 436,748. Klid, Soroka,and Yurkevych, CIUS Newsletter 2011, p. 32.145 The case of one of the more high-profile veterans, University of Alberta chancellor Peter Savarynis illustrative. Carefully using euphemistic terms, the pro-nationalist Ukrainian press in Canada presentedSavaryn’s background as a merit. In his Ukrainian-language memoirs, Savaryn expresses pride in hisSS past—which was unknown to most of his colleagues at the University of Alberta, and omitted fromhis biography in the English-language Encyclopedia of Ukraine. ‘Savaryn, Petro,’ in Danylo Husar Struk(ed.), Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vol. IV, Ph-Sr, Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press,1993, pp. 540–541. On Savaryn’s Waffen-SS past, see Bairak, Ukrains’ka strilets’ka hromada, pp. 184–185;Marko Levyts’kyi, ‘Savaryn vybranyi holovoiu SKVU’ Ukrains’ki visti, 7 Dec 1983, p. 3; Petro Savaryn, Zsoboiu vzialy Ukrainu: Vid Ternopillia do Al’berty, Kyiv: KVITs, 2007, pp. 252–253, 275, 336; Bolianovs’kyi,Dyviziia ‘Halychyna’, p. 385.146 A 2004 Festschrift for the 80th birthday of linguist Anna-Halja Horbatsch presents her husbandOleksa’s Waffen-SS past in the following terms: ‘The war begins, and O. Horbatsch, risking his life, crossesthe front and goes west to return to his native L’viv area. On the way he ends up in fascist captivity. Heworks for a while as translator in a POW camp. Later he manages to again get to the University of L’viv. . . .

In the final two war years he serves in the Ukrainian Division [sic]. In 1945 O. Horbatsch finds himself inthe American zone of occupation in Germany, again in a POW camp, this time already in an American[one].’ Valerii Mokienko, ‘Das sprachwissenschaftliche Werk Oleksa Horbatschs,’ Greifswalder UkrainischeHefte1(1): Die Ukraine in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart. Aufsätze zu Geschichte, Sprache und Literatur,Greifswald: Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität Greifswald, Lehrstuhl für Ukrainistik, 2004, p. 12. On Horbatschin the Waffen-SS, see M. J. Melnyk, To Battle, pp. 335–336; Bolianovs’kyi, Dyviziia ‘Halychyna’, p. 133;Bolianovs’kyi, Ukrains’ki viiskovi formyrovannia, pp. 165, 512; Mykola Mushynka, ‘Ioho biohrafiia v iohonaukovykh pratsiakh: Do 75-richcha dnia narodzhennia Prof. Oleksi Horbacha z Nimechchyny,’ DruzhnoVpered: Shchomisiachnyi kul’turno-hromads’kyi iliustrovannyi zhurnal, vydae Soiuz ruyniv-ukraintsivSlovachchyny 3 (September 1993), pp. 12–14.

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FIGURE 6 Volodymyr Kubijovyc (center, sitting) and Manoly Lupul (right) sign a contractbetween the Shevchenko Scientific Society and the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studiesat the University of Alberta on the collaboration on the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, December1976. Standing, from left to right: Petro Savaryn, Antanas Figol, and Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytsky,sitting: George S. N. Luckyj, Volodymyr Kubijovyc, Manoly Lupul. Bohdan Klid and MyroslavYurkevych (eds.), KIUS: 30 rokiv uspikhiv 1976–2006 (Edmonton: Canadian Institute ofUkrainian Studies, University of Alberta, 2006), 1.

the University of Toronto Library,147 and Roman Drazhn’ovs’kyi, rector ofthe Ukrainian Free University in Munich.148 Horbatsch and Veryha remainedactive in the Ukrainian Waffen-SS veterans’ association through the rest oftheir lives.149

The Waffen-SS was designated a criminal organization at the NurembergTrial, something which has complicated nationalist myth making aroundthe unit.150 While the international tribunal ruled the organization criminal,the war criminality of its members needs to be assessed on an individualbasis. After the war, the Waffen-SS veterans denied all association with Nazi

147 Husar Struk (ed.), Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vol. IV , p. 590; Bolianovs’kyi, Dyviziia ‘Halychyna,’p. 385.148 Bolianovs’kyi, Dyviziia ‘Halychyna,’ p. 386; Mykola Shafoval and Roman Iaremko (eds.),Universitas Libera Ucrainensis 1921–2006, Munich: Ukrains’kyi Vil’nyi Universytet, 2006, pp. 101–103.149 B. Matsiv (ed.) Ukrains’ka Dyviziia ‘Halychyna,’ p. 254.150 Der Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher vor dem Internationalen Militärgerichtshof.Nürnberg 14. November 1945 – 1. Oktober 1946. Amtlicher Text Verhandlungsniederschriften. Nürnberg1947. Fotomechanischer Nachdruck in 23 Bänden, Frechen: Komet, 2001) Bd. 1, pp. 189–414. This paperfollows the definition of war crimes based upon the Principles of International Law Recognized in the

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Germany and responsibility for its crimes. Interviewed by the CBC Radio in1987, Veryha insisted,

I have never felt to be a Nazi. I never believed in Nazism, and . . . Ihave never been a fascist. I feel that I am and I always was a Ukrainianpatriot. And that’s what I am. And if you would ask me another question,if I would do the same thing all over, I would . . .

Q: That SS tattoo, do you still bear it on your body? Where was itimprinted on your body?

A: I . . . I believe it was on the left arm. Under left arm, yes.

Q: Under the left armpit?

A: Under left armpit, yes. But, uh . . . I am really not sure. I did not lookfor it, you know, for a number of years, so I am not sure if I do have it.(chuckles)

Q: When did you become aware of its meaning to the allies?

A: Well, it was in the prisoner of war camp there were some who weresaying, you know, the people who are having it, you know, they willbe persecuted. That those are criminals, or something, you know. Thatwas the first time. But I never, ever paid any attention to it, because it isnothing else than, you know, that it indicates, you know, what kind ofblood group you had, just in case you’re wounded.”151

Like many other of the Waffen-SS-men-turned-activists-and-scholars, Veryhawas a complex figure. Interviewing Veryha shortly before his death about hismemories of the Holocaust, John-Paul Himka describes him as ‘exception-ally knowledgeable, intelligent and honest.’152 Veryha recalled, in gruesomedetail a joint 1941 Aktion in Tovste, Galicia, in which Germans, assisted by

Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and in the Judgment of the Tribunal, 1950. Principle VI reads: ‘Thecrimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:

[. . .] (b) War crimes: Violations of the laws or customs of war include, but are not limitedto murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave-labor or for any other purpose of civilianpopulation of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war, of personson the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destructionof cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.’ http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/FULL/390?OpenDocument (accessed 15 May 2011)

151 Paul Corvallo, ‘The Deschênes Commission,’ Sunday Morning, CBC Radio, CBC Digital Archives,18 January 1987. http://archives.cbc.ca/war_conflict/war_crimes/clips/9265/ (accessed 9 July 2011).152 John-Paul Himka, Ukrainians, Jews and the Holocaust: Divergent Memories, Saskatoon: HeritagePress, Prairie Centre for the Study of Ukrainian Heritage, University of Saskatchewan, 2009, p. 12.

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Ukrainian policemen, carried out a mass murder of thousands of Jews.153

Neither personal experiences of the extermination of the Jews, nor insightinto the conditions of the Dachau concentration camp prevented Veryhafrom joining the ranks of the Waffen-SS and pledging his life to Adolf Hitler.

Some defenders of the division argue that it was justified because itwas defending Ukraine against the Red Army; by joining the unit manyconscious Ukrainians were able to escape from Bolshevik clutches. Typically,apologetics for the unit point at Soviet crimes in 1944 as a reason for joiningthe unit, insisting its members had no choice but to join. Certainly, there is nodenial that the Red Army committed serious human right violations in 1944,as they re-conquered Western Ukraine and moved into Polish and Germanlands. Yet, one could also look at it from the other side: what was goingon in the way of German atrocities in the period during which the unit wasdefending the Third Reich? During this period Nazi Germany was killing offthe Jews immediately to the west of the front. As the Red Army halted onlya few hundred kilometers from Łódz in the second half of 1944 the gassingof Jews continued unabated in Auschwitz, less than a hundred kilometersaway. Nazi Germany was killing most of the remainder of the 90,000 Jews inŁódz, liquidating the ghetto on 23 June 1944, and asphyxiating over 7,000 ofthem in the following three weeks in the briefly re-opened Chełmno gassingfacility. Sixty-seven thousand Jews of Łódz were deported to Auschwitz inAugust 1944, where most were gassed upon arrival.154

CONCLUSION

Following the opening of Soviet archives, the release of previously classi-fied sections of the Deschênes Commission and the findings of Polish andUkrainian historical commissions, the prospects for critical research are todaybetter than they have ever been. The access to a wealth of new materi-als, the emergence of new, critical scholarship in Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine,Britain, and Canada have increased our knowledge of the history of theunit, but has barely had an impact on the narrative retained by the dias-pora and the Ukrainian far right. On the contrary, the efforts to legitimizethe unit have been stepped up over the past five years. The UkrainianCanadian Congress saluting the unit’s veterans on Remembrance Day andthe introduction of new endowments in the honor of former members ofthe Waffen-SS Galizien at the University of Alberta are indicative of suchefforts, as are the commercialized nostalgia and neo-fascist parades in L’vivand other Western Ukrainian cities today. The nostalgia is accompanied by anapologetic narrative, selective at best, based partly upon denial and omission.

153 Himka, Ukrainians, Jews and the Holocaust, pp. 12–24.154 Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, New York: Basic Books, 2010,pp. 310–311.

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FIGURE 7 Bi-lingual Svoboda Billboard on the site of the Polish village Huta Pieniacka,burned down together with over 700 of its residents by the Fourth Police Regiment of theWaffen-SS Galizien and a detachment of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army on February 29,1944. Svoboda categorically denies the conclusions of the Polish and Ukrainian historicalcommissions. (Courtesy of Lucyna Kulinska) (color figure available online).

On the site of the Huta Pieniacka massacre, the ultra-nationalist Svobodaparty has put up a large, bilingual billboard, denying Ukrainian involve-ment in the massacre. This phenomenon is, of course, not unique to Galicia(Figure 7). We recognize the narrative from other parts of East and CentralEurope: to local patriotic Waffen-SS admirers, the perpetrators were alwayssomeone else, their Waffen-SS units clean.155

While there has been an increase in the interest of the unit, researchinto the unit is still at an early stage. We are only beginning to understandthe dynamics of local collaboration in the occupied Soviet Union. Historiansneed to work through the newly available sources, but also to engage them-selves with the instrumentalization of the unit’s past. While not claiming toprovide a full and complete account of the unit’s history, this essay setsout some of the problems associated with the partial rehabilitation of theunit. Issues such as the unit’s institutionalized racism and anti-Semitism,its commitment to Adolf Hitler and the victory of Nazi Germany, and theinvolvement of officers, soldiers, and affiliated police regiments in atrocitiescall for more research and further inquiry into the unit’s past. The problemit raises are not only historical, but also political and ethical.

155 Heidemarie Uhl, ‘Of Heroes and Victims: World War II in Austrian Memory,’ Austrian HistoryYearbook 42 (2011) pp. 185–200; Maria Bucur, Heroes and Victims: Remembering War in Twentieth-Century Romania, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009, p. 220; John-Paul Himka and JoannaMichlic, Bringing the Dark Past to Light: The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe,University of Nebraska Press, forthcoming).

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